Strauss & co - 10 November 2014, Johannesburg

99 144 Ezrom Kgobokanyo Sebata LEGAE south african 1938–1999 Loneliness signed with the artist’s initials and numbered 1/5 bronze with a brown patina, mounted on a wooden base height: 174 cm, including base R300 000–500 000 notes A skilled draughtsman and accomplished sculptor, Ezrom Legae is best remembered for his expressive figure drawings and tall, elemental sculptures. On his death in 1999 Kendell Geers heralded him as ‘one of South Africa’s greatest artists’. 1 Legae had a modest start, initially working as assistant at a hair salon in central Johannesburg. His brother introduced him to the adult recreation centre at Polly Street in 1959 where he pursued his interest in music. In 1962 he began attending art classes led by Cecil Skotnes and Sydney Kumalo. His skill and facility quickly generated notice. In 1964 he became an instructor at the centre. The year after he met dealer Egon Guenther, who enabled the production of Legae’s first bronze sculptures. Guenther also introduced Legae to his collection of traditional African art, much of it acquired at auction in Europe. In a 2000 interview Guenther recalled the decisive influence 2 these encounters had on Legae, whose practice critic Ivor Powell has characterised as ‘absolutely [and] convincingly located at a cusp between African sensibility and reference on one hand, and the transcendent and universalist preoccupations of international modernism on the other’. 3 Legae held his first solo exhibition at Guenther’s gallery in 1966 and the following year received the Ernest Oppenheimer Trust Award for a rough-textured brick clay (terracotta) sculpture displayed on ‘Art-SA-Today’group exhibition. This bronze from 1970, produced during a busy period of exposure and consolidation, bears out the defining attributes of Legae’s early practice. His figures were reduced, distorted, totemic and unabashedly primal in character. Art historian EJ de Jager also noted the ‘absence of outward movement from the central axis’ in many of his early compositions, as well as Legae’s tendency to balance ‘subordinate masses’, for example, between left and right, front and back. 4 There is a close correspondence between the expressive content of this melancholy work and the artist, who in a 1974 interview remarked: ‘Various moods prevail in my work; I am a very emotional person.’ 5 1. Geers, Kendell (1999), ‘No support for artists, The Star , 27 January. 2. Nel, Karel (2000) African Art from the Egon Guenther Family Collection , auction catalogue, New York: Sotheby’s (New York), 18 November. 3. Powell, Ivor (2006) ‘Ezrom Legae’, in Revisions, Cape Town: UNISA/ SAHO/ Iziko Museums. Page 192. 4. De Jager, EJ (1978) ‘Contemporary African sculpture in South Africa’, in Fort Hare Papers , Vol. 6(6), September. Page 441. 5. Katz, Dina (1974), ‘A man of two worlds: Ezrom Legae’, in Lantern , Vol. 24(1), September. Page 62.