Strauss & co - 10 November 2014, Johannesburg

114 158 Cecil Edwin Frans SKOTNES south african 1926–2009 Conversation signed carved, incised and painted wood panel 122,5 by 120,5 cm R500 000–700 000 notes In 1956, at the prompting of his dealer Egon Guenther, Cecil Skotnes began to explore more fully woodcarving as a complement to his printmaking. Skotnes, who at the time produced chiefly landscape studies, soon started embellishing his printing blocks with marble dust and coloured oxides, showing the end result as ‘autonomous works’. 1 Commonly referred to as ‘incised paintings’, these works are now celebrated as the epitome of Skotnes’s output. Informed by a great wealth of influences, ranging from German Expressionism and Cubism to the classical civilisations of Italy, Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, Greece and, of course, West and Central Africa, Skotnes synthesised all these influences into an original proposition that was wholly his own. By the late 1960s his subject matter had also decisively shifted from landscape to abstracted figures. Initially a great admirer of painter JH Pierneef, Skotnes later criticised South Africa’s landscape tradition for its conservatism and limiting scope: ‘Our art, having grown up in a political system that is founded on standards incompatible with democratic morality, is mainly concerned with extending the influence of European and American styles and maintaining an interest in the South African landscape, both rural and urban. The political and human environment which plays so important a role in our lives is scarcely touched on … even when important influences are employed …’ 2 The figures in this work, as in so many of the artist’s incised paintings, are unspecified. Elemental, fragmented and nominally genderless, they are, in the great Skotnes tradition, archetypal. Tellingly, however, each figure is visibly different, both in form and colour. The imbalance in scale and oblique linear projections from the taller figure invite narrative projection. The work’s title however suggests dialogue, a very basic form of mutuality. ‘The great human drama being enacted now is almost entirely ignored,’stated Skotnes during his 1979 lecture. 3 This ostensibly apolitical work animates this drama, with the minimum of fuss. 1.Harmsen, Frieda (1996) ‘Artist Resolute’, in Cecil Skotnes , Cape Town: Cecil Skotnes. Page 14. 2. Skotnes, Cecil (1979) ‘The Problem of Ethnicity’, in The State of Art in South Africa , Cape Town: University of Cape Town. Page 16. 3. Ibid. Page 17.