Strauss & co - 8 October 2009, Cape Town

152 285 Wolf Kibel S OUTH A FRICAN 1903-1938 Self Portrait oil on canvas laid down on board 43 by 39,5cm R500 000 – 600 000 EXHIBITED South African National Gallery, and Pretoria Art Museum , Wolf Kibel Retrospective, 1976, catalogue no 29 LITERATURE Freda Kibel and Neville Dubow, Wolf Kibel, Human & Rousseau, Cape Town, 1968, illus on dust-jacket and frontispiece ‘This is the oil portrait (colour plate I) painted two years before the pastel. It is a remarkable statement whose emotional content is carried as much by its overall treatment as by the characterisation of the face. The painted area corresponding to the sitter’s shirt is composed of great rivers of broken white interspersed with tiny spatterings of local colour, the whole bifurcated by the red gash of a tie. Its effect is one of an upward surge of nervous energy capped and stilled by the face. It is a compelling image. If one wants, one can already read into it the premonition of the death mask. It assumes a cast which is at once quizzical, shrewd, even gently self- mocking. It is a brave man’s view of himself. No touch of self-pity softens its awareness. Instead there is the barest hint of a swagger, but no sooner mooted than turned into a shrug.’ pp 42 and 43