Strauss & co - 4 February 2013, Johannesburg

217 549 Cecil Edwin Frans SKOTNES SOUTH AFRICAN 1926-2009 Cat 1960 signed in pencil in the margin and impressed with the Fred Schimmel Studio stamp screenprint in colour image size: 40,5 by 71,5cm R8 000 – 10 000 LITERATURE Frieda Harmsen (ed.), Cecil Skotnes , South African National Gallery, Cape Town, 1996, page 84, figure 3.1, where a woodcut of the same subject is illustrated: In Pippa Skotnes’monograph on her father’s work titled At the Cutting Edge: Cecil Skotnes as Printmaker she talks about the origins of Cat , “The image I remember most clearly from my early childhood … was a large cat, roughly cut in wood and printed by hand … It was apparently a portrait of a friend’s one-eyed cat which hunted for its dinner and gave its name to my own, more gentle pet, Kotchka.” Elza Miles, Polly Street: The Story of an Art Centre , The Ampersand Foundation, 2004, page 106, figure 125, where a woodcut of the same subject is illustrated: “There was lively motivation in the Art Centre. Durant Sihlali recalls that a casual drawing of a stalking cat by one of the students inspired Cecil Skotnes’ woodcut Cat (1960).” 548 549