Strauss & co - 16 May 2011, Johannesburg

190 Eugene Labuschagne studied art under Walter Battiss at Pretoria Boy’s High School and briefly under Lippy Lipshitz at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town before departing for Paris in 1947 to study the works of Modern masters he admired – Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne and, in particular, Juan Gris. In A Still Life of Flowers in a White Jug (Lot 100) Labuschagne downplays the more naturalistic approach to the subject with simplified forms, strong outlines and subtle tones. By comparison, Synthesis borrows the Cubist abstractions of Gris to find a new means of expression for local colours and dramatic iconography such as thorns. In an interview with Walter Battiss for an article in Lantern in 1952, he spoke of his intention to continue Gris’s notion of painting as architecture on a flat surface in order to achieve the highest aesthetic freedom and symbolic richness beyond the limitations imposed by the object and the surface. i 1 Walter Battiss, Lantern , Volume 2 Number 2 , October 1952, pages 177 and 210. 282 Eugene LABUSCHAGNE south african 1921–1990 Synthesis signed and dated 59 oil on panel 79 by 98 cm R100 000 – 150 000