Social Stances exhibition currently on display at Strauss & Co’s offices

The figures huddle together, waiting in patient purgatory to receive medical assistance. A quiet dignity permeates George Pemba’s The Waiting Room (1992) ­- a doctor consults with a mother and her newborn infant, a nurse hurries off to do her rounds. Bright flashes of colour punctuate the painting – a woman wearing a mulberry pink headscarf and a man in cerulean blue workers’ overalls. The whole scene is bathed in soft, yellow light.

Although Robert Hodgins’s large scale work The Consulting Room (2006), deals with the same subject matter, it has none of the sense of community and warmth of Pemba’s work. Hodgins’ artwork seems to mock the authority of the doctor, who hovers self-importantly and ominously over his patient. The artist had no time for ostentatiousness and pompous displays of grandeur and seemed to relish dismantling these figures of authority in his artworks.

The exhibition Social Stances, is currently on display at Strauss & Co’s offices in Houghton, Johannesburg. Curator and Strauss & Co senior art specialist Wilhelm Van Rensburg, pairs Pemba and Hodgins and seeks common ground between two individualistic artists, neither of whom received the recognition they deserved during their lifetimes.

At first glance, Pemba and Hodgins have little in common, both stylistically and biographically.  Pemba was born in 1912 in Korsten, a small enclave outside Port Elizabeth, Hodgins eight years later in Dulwich, London, in the United Kingdom.

“They never met each other ­– I doubt whether they were even aware of the other’s existence,” says Van Rensburg. Pemba’s portrayals of African rural and township life, frequently with traditional cultural practices as subject matter, were rooted in social realism. In contrast, Hodgins had a more tongue-in-cheek approach – his art often poked fun at the so-called captains of industry, self-important businessmen, politicians and military grandees. “The styles these two artists employed can be placed at opposite ends of a continuum. Pemba’s naturalism sensitively rendered imagined images of the past and present, whereas Hodgins’s style can be characterized as semi-abstract and expressionist, exposing human fallibility to the glare of satire,” he explains.

Social Stances is the third in a series of ongoing exhibitions in which Strauss & Co art specialists pair South African artists to highlight the synergies between their life and work. It also forms part of Strauss & Co’s annual art education drive, in which the auction house gives back to South African art lovers and the art community by presenting an educational exhibition of works that are usually inaccessible in private and corporate collections.

“We are planning a range of lectures, walkabouts and masterclasses for established artists, all centred around this exhibition. We hope that art lovers who are already acquainted with Pemba and Hodgins will discover new, fresh perspectives from this pairing. If you’re getting to know them for the first time, it will hopefully lead to an enduring interest in the work of these two exceptional artists,” he concludes.

Social Stances is on view until 31 July at Strauss & Co’s Johannesburg offices in Houghton, Johannesburg. The exhibition is open to all members of the public from 9.00am to 4.00pm on weekdays, but the auction house adheres to strict Covid protocols so please make an appointment for a viewing.

Call 011 728 8246 or send an email to jhb@straussart.co.za.