Strauss & co - Wits Art Museum

26 WITS ARTS MUSEUM ENDOWMENT AUCTION 16 Walter Oltmann (b.1960) Child Linocut print on paper 107 x 197 cm Edition 3/10 2011 Donated by the artist R18 000 – 24 000 Walter Oltmann is renowned for his exquisite works using wire as a medium. This work extends from a series concerned with the image of mother and child. A monumental work on this theme was initially made for the exhibition Skin-to-Skin for the 2007 Kaunas Textile Biennale, in Lithuania. For that he used ‘… fine wire woven to resemble lacework that could also be read as a permeable skin…’, which he felt was a visual equivalent for the ‘…insecure barrier between an HIV infected mother and her unborn child’. In making this print he wanted ‘…to convey the qualities of intimacy and fragility that lace holds…’and so he ‘translated the lacework weaving into fine line cutting of an image of a skeletal form of a child’. The scale of the image belies the delicacy of the execution, with the poignant skeletal remains of a child enmeshed in the lace upon which it is lain.  AN