Irma Stern’s ‘Pink Safari’ was a big seller at auction in London last week.

It would seem the roem en faam of South African art is on the up and up in international appreciation, but don’t believe everything you read.

This morning, The Sowetan incorrectly conflated the sale of a selection of the iconic Irma Stern’s works at auction in London last week with sale of just one of her pieces a year earlier- but besides the numbers and dates mix up- the real point is that South African work is picking up big bucks at auction overseas – the works auctioned last week brought in a total of £3.5 million, or approximately R43 million. Let’s take a look at some of the bigger sellers that went under the hammer last week.

Two works by Irma Stern were sold to a grand total of around £1.4 million, or approximately R17.1 million.

Stern’s ‘Zulu Girl’ and ‘Pink Safari’

Stern’s ‘Pink Sari’, a stunning image from one of Irma Stern’s trips to Zanzibar which inspired some of her best work, dated 1947, and with its original Zanzibar frame, went for £959,650 (about R11.7 million), while her ‘Zulu Girl’, painted in 1935 at the height of Stern’s creative powers sold for £457,250 (about R5.6 million).

From the Bonhams Press Release,

Never before seen on the open market, ‘Pink Safari’ was acquired directly from the artist circa 1961 and then passed by direct descent to the current owner. It was the top lot in Bonhams sale of South African Art which has consistently broken records for South African art over the past five years.

Irma Stern’s trips to Zanzibar in 1939 and 1945 were life-changing events that would continue to exert influence on her artistic output for years to come.  The pink sari is a stunning example of the beauty Stern encountered on the island. In the women of the Zanzibar in particular, she had found her greatest inspiration.

…

‘Zulu Girl’ is an iconic image of African womanhood from one of South Africa’s leading tribal groups.

Gerard Sekoto’s ‘Portrait of the Artist’s Mother’ and William Kentridge’s ‘Anti-Waste’

William Kentridge’s ‘Anti-Waste’ was sold for £253,250 or about R3.1 million

According to Bonhams Press Release,

The oil and charcoal work dates to about 1990, as William Kentridge started work on Mine, the third film in his series 9 Drawings for Projection (1989-2003). South Africa was on the cusp of political change, in the tentative years between the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, the unbanning of political organisations and the free elections of 1994, and Kentridge was gaining renown as one of the country’s most important and innovative polymath artists. Kentridge is the third-generation South African of Lithuanian Jewish heritage, the son of the distinguished anti-apartheid lawyer Sydney Kentridge.

‘Portrait of the Artist’s Mother’ by Gerard Sekoto, South Africa’s leading black artist, sold for £79,250, or about R972 600.

From the Bonhams Press Release,

For anyone going into exile there are many costs, loss of contact with one’s culture, one’s language, one’s family and the places of one’s youth and childhood. Among these, the loss of direct contact with one’s parents, and in particular with one’s mother, is perhaps the most difficult. It is not surprising therefore to find that Gerard Sekoto’s image of his mother painted before his going into exile shows a mix of sadness, kindness and love. His mother is a powerful figure, but sits humbly on a low box in her home. The painting is no less powerful for its humility.

On the surge of interest in South African art, Giles Peppiatt, Director of South African Art at Bonhams, had this to say:

This sale once again confirms the pre-eminence of Irma Stern in South African art and the continuing interest of the international art market in South African art, It was just a couple of years ago that prices of the kind achieved in this sale would not have seemed credible.

Last year, about 45 years after Irma Stern’s death, Bonhams achieved a record auction price for any South African work of art when her ‘Arab Priest’, from 1945, fetched nearly US$5 million (about R38.3 million) at auction.

[Source: The Sowetan, Bonhams, Wall Street Journal]