Highlights of a must-view auction

A walk-about among the lots of the upcoming Strauss & Co autumn sale is a bit like a journey on the Blue Train, watching the Southern African landscape flash past the window.

There’s a quick view of a white stucco cottage, part of a Karoo landscape (Train Passing through the Karoo, Peter Clarke R 150 000 – 200 000). A Northern Cape sunset follows, with big skies punctuated by camelthorn silhouettes (Kimberley Sunset, JH Pierneef, R 800 000 – 1 200 000). Dusk follows in Namibia and the sky becomes a watercolour palette of cotton candy pink, mauve and indigo, hues melting together like Neapolitan ice cream (Evening, Sheepfold, Adolph Jentsch R 700 000 – 1 000 000).

Due to be held over two consecutive days, 17 and 18 May, the upcoming art auction offers a significant selection of modern, post-war and contemporary South African art.

Some of the highlights include artworks by JH Pierneef, Keith Alexander, Walter Battiss and William Kentridge. The artworks transcend time and space and offer collectors a time capsule-like gaze of landscapes long gone.

“Klipriviersberg, Alberton (estimate R1.8 – 2.4 million) is a momentous work up for auction,” says Alastair Meredith, senior art specialist at Strauss & Co. The painting, executed in pastels of celadon green, salmon, and muted terracotta, depicts a rural homestead in Alberton in the southern part of Johannesburg. The painting is the precursor of the famous final Klipriviersberg, Alberton panel, part of Pierneef’s Johannesburg Station series that was meant to encourage tourism and rail travel in South Africa. The series features iconic South African tourist destinations like the Knysna Heads and Valley of Desolation in the Karoo, so it’s strange to think that this area of Alberton, nowadays right next to the M1 South, held the same significance for the artist as South Africa’s more famously idyllic tourist destinations.

Pierneef deviates from his distinctive more formal and architectural style in this painting, which, as a preliminary sketch, was “painted quickly, with confidence and swagger, the surface having a gorgeous and swirling arrangement,” Meredith comments.

There are plenty of blue-chip investment opportunities in this auction, but even novice collectors with less deep pockets will have the chance to bid on works by well-known names at lower estimates. Pierneef’s Ontwerp (Design with Beetle) is a delightful Art Deco-inspired piece, reminiscent of the famous Russian–French artist Erté’s style. The artwork features the common brown and yellow fruit chafer – the bane of gardeners and fruit farmers – in a stylised, symmetrical composition, suspended within geometric, emerald panes. Executed in 1916, this work is jewel-like and ahead of its time – six years later, the excavation of Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb unleashed a frenzy of scarab-inspired motifs into the art, design and fashion worlds.

With estimates of R25 000 – 35 000, this unusual gem offers budding collectors an opportunity to own a remarkable work from Pierneef’s extensive oeuvre without breaking the bank.

While landscape artists such as Pierneef depicted the Southern African landscape through an idealistic gaze, Keith Alexander’s paintings explore challenging themes such as decay, alienation and the politics of land. Four paintings by this remarkable artist go under the hammer in the May sale. His work tends to sway between the surreal and the hyper-real: at first glance, what seems to offer viewers an uneasy familiarity, then plunges them into an uncanny abyss.

The Distinguished Guest, like Klipriviersberg, Alberton, showcases a rural homestead. But unlike the bucolic scene in Pierneef’s depiction, Alexander’s stirs with menace. The homestead, bathed in soft light, may seem inviting at first, but the tuxedo-clad figure on the stoep and the dark shadows lurking inside the homestead lend an ominous sense of foreboding to the artwork.

“We also have a wide selection of William Kentridge’s works coming up on auction,” remarks Strauss & Co executive director Susie Goodman. Most South Africans are aware of this iconic artist’s status in the international art world – major museums such as the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Tate Modern (London) and the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam) boast several Kentridges among their permanent collections – but he can be a bit intimidating to rookie collectors. A number of early etchings dating from the 1980s, including Man at a Desk (starting bid R15 000), provide an excellent entry-level opportunity for adding work by a world-renowned blue-chip artist to a budding art collection.

“At the other end of the spectrum”, explains Meredith, “we are excited to offer an especially remarkable work in Kentridge’s artistic career – Untitled, Drawing from Il Ritorno d’Ulisse (starting bid R4 million). This is one of roughly 40 drawings the artist made for the very first opera he directed, based on Homer’s epic The Odyssey. It is a monumental charcoal work depicting the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla in Rome.”

This significant contemporary South African artwork, along with all the others on the sale, is on view in Strauss & Co’s gallery in Houghton, Johannesburg. “In the past, we had open viewing days for the public, but now with Covid-19 restrictions in place, visitors are requested to schedule an appointment to view. There is no obligation to buy, or even to register as a bidder”, Goodman insists, “we are only too happy for fellow art lovers to come and have a look around the auction exhibition”.

The auction will be a virtual live auction, streamed through Strauss & Co’s website, with bidding online in real time.

Visit https://www.straussart.co.za/ to view the complete auction catalogue or register to bid. To make an appointment for viewing, please call 011 728 8246 or send an email to jhb@straussart.co.za