Another gavel-banging art auction

The showstopping Modern & Contemporary Art Auction, to be held on Tuesday May 16 in Joburg, is part of Strauss & Co’s wider Joburg Auction Week, which includes a wine sale. The art auction includes 103 lots that span 125 years, from 1899 onwards, and features work from William Kentridge, David Koloane, Nelson Makamo and Mary Sibande. It is estimated that it will make between R60m and R90m.

This cracking forecast comes amid bumper sales for the auction house in 2023 — including Irma Stern’s Children Reading the Koran, which went for a record-breaking R22.3m in March. Strauss & Co has also had higher demand for key South African modernists including Freida Lock and Alexis Preller as well as record prices for contemporary artists David Goldblatt and Dylan Lewis. 

For those who can’t spare a couple of million on a Stern or Sekoto, all the lots are on show to the public in the run-up to the auction. With state funding of the visual arts diminishing by the second, this provides a chance to see significant artists’ work at no cost. As a bonus, viewers can attend related walkabouts and talks by the group’s team of experts.  

Here are the FM’s picks of lots to love.

Migrancy and displacement 

Vivid florals and still lifes are prolific in this auction but there are several less obvious themes running through it too, most poignant of which is that of migrancy, the forced labour system and displacement. That’s captured in works such as Frans Oerder’s Portrait of the Artist’s Gardener, Anton van Wouw’s Shangaan and Gerard Sekoto’s Up Prinsloo Street. 

Born in the Netherlands, Oerder moved to Pretoria in 1890 and joined the South African War as an official war artist before becoming a prisoner of war. The auction sees two of his paintings up for sale, and while English Christmas Roses may have more all-round aesthetic appeal, it is Portrait of the Artist’s Gardener that will stop you in your tracks. 

As may be expected in turn of the century Pretoria, Oerder painted Boer scenes and portraits, but many of his early sitters were black. These included card players, indunas, cattle drivers and washerwomen — many of them on the fringes of society. This emotive portrait shows the artist’s gardener, perhaps a migrant worker — a handsome and solemn man — in the lead-up to the war. Despite a largely sombre and dark palette, Oerder skilfully uses light to highlight the subject’s nose and lips. The lot estimate is between R120,000 and R160,000.

Anton van Wouw, a contemporary of Oerder, is known for his monumental (and often nationalistic) sculptures, such as those in Pretoria’s Church Square and at the Voortrekker Monument. He also produced smaller, more profitable and collectable works and is recognised as the father of the naturalistic sculpture movement in South Africa.  

Three of Van Wouw’s works are featured, including Shangaan, which was modelled in the artist’s renowned Doornfontein studio and cast in Rome. This bronze on a wooden plinth is of a well-built Shangaan man. According to Strauss & Co’s senior art specialist Alastair Meredith, “60% of the underground migrant workers were Shangaan and came from southern Mozambique”. The sitter is noticeably defiant and powerful in the face of such constant exploitation. The artwork is estimated at between R600,000 and R800,000. 

As a black artist working a few decades later, Gerard Sekoto’s perspective may differ from that of Van Wouw and Oerder, yet it touches on similar themes. Sekoto, a pioneer of black modernism, lived in and captured the vibrancy of Sophiatown and township life, before going into exile in Paris to escape the stifling realities of life under segregation. 

1946’s Up Prinsloo Street was made during his stay in the Pretoria settlement of Eastwood. The artist was very aware of racial divisions in the lead-up to the introduction of official  apartheid from 1948 onwards, but was also drawn to everyday subjects — including what is probably a shop assistant in a typical white coat, hastily cycling through town past three women crossing a road. Sekoto begs us to ask who these people are and what they’re rushing off to. The image is of Prinsloo and Vermeulen streets in the Pretoria CBD, now rather fittingly named after Nelson Mandela and Walter Sisulu. The artwork is estimated at R2.5m-R3.5m.

Top investment 

Jacob Hendrik Pierneef is South Africa’s best-known landscape painter and a perennial favourite of collectors and auction houses. In July 2022, Strauss & Co held a career-spanning auction of his art which made R20m. His work and the historical and sociopolitical context in which they were created has attracted much attention and debate in recent years. If you are a devotee this auction, which includes nine artworks by Pierneef,  is for you. 

Farmhouse, Tulbagh has a certain je ne sais quoi. Dated to 1929, the painting features a simple white vernacular farmhouse and outbuilding. Pierneef, the son of a builder, was drawn to the Tulbagh area and the Cape’s architectural history. This scenic piece perfectly depicts the area’s purple mountains and pink sand.  

This piece was painted the same year that Pierneef completed his large panels for the Joburg Railway Station concourse,  now housed at the Rupert Museum in Stellenbosch. The artwork is estimated at R1.5m-R2m.

A masterful painter 

One of Gqeberha’s finest sons, George Milwa Mnyaluza Pemba, loved art from an early age and worked hard at his craft. But it wasn’t until a major exhibition at Everard Read Gallery in Joburg in 1990 that he finally became known on a national scale. 

Pemba is famous for perfectly capturing township life and this 1976 work, A Woman Sewing, is no different. The vivid colour of her orange shirt, the pink and blue cloth, and the light filtering through the small window show us what a masterful painter Pemba was. Meredith says that though “the artist’s work has been undervalued in the past, compared to some of his contemporaries, that is changing”. The artwork is estimated at R250,000-R350,000.

An abundance of Villa 

Italian sculptor Edoardo Villa arrived in Pretoria in 1942 as a prisoner of war and ended up staying. His striking work was grounded in modernism, but he was highly influenced by African art and the industrialisation of Joburg.  

He is widely respected locally and a must in any serious art collection.  Meredith says: “If Villa had had the international platform that apartheid denied him due to cultural boycotts, he would have been a highly respected international artist.” There are nine of his works up for grabs. 

Villa was an early proponent of public art in Joburg and his Panel for Killarney Mall Fountain really catches the eye. This hefty lot, perfect to hang on a well-built wall, is a great Villa piece but also a memento of Joburg and its enduring love of shopping centres. It also harks back to a time when the now dour Killarney Mall boasted such a thing of beauty. The artwork is estimated at between R300,000 and R500,000.

Other honourable mentions:  

• Irma Stern, Malay Woman, estimate R4.5m-R5.5m;
• Walter Oltmann, Aurum Disguise, estimate R200,000-R300,000; 
• Judith Mason, Tapestry with Pink Flowers, estimate R500,000-R600,000. 

Strauss & Co’s Live Virtual Auction: Modern & Contemporary Art takes place on Tuesday May 16 at 7pm. All artworks are free to view at 89 Central Street, Houghton, Joburg