Strauss & co - 9 November 2015, Johannesburg

172 247 Cecil Edwin Frans SKOTNES SOUTH AFRICAN 1926 – 2009 Five Figures, panel and two totems carved, incised and painted wood panels panel: 126 by 248 cm; totems: 180,5 by 14,5 cm each R800 000 – 1 200 000 ©The Estate of Cecil Skotnes | DALRO The moment when Cecil Skotnes downed his paintbrushes in 1954 to take up woodcutting was a pivotal moment in his career, and in the history of modern South African art. Under the influence of German gallery owner, printmaker and African art aficionado Egon Guenther, Skotnes took up woodcuts, then a little-used medium in South Africa. The change enabled some of Skotnes’ s chief artistic innovations and helped forge an aesthetic that was uniquely South African, even as it included the influence of German Expressionism and even Cubism. ‘Woodcutting offered Cecil the possibility of finding a new form for the symbolism he increasingly began to attach to a particularly local vision, without having to reject the rich European traditions which initially appealed to him…’ wrote his daughter, Pippa Skotnes 1 . His second artistic reinvention, however, was the definitive one. ‘Guenther drew Skotnes’ attention to the beauty of the blocks from which prints were pulled, and suggested to him that the block could be refined and presented as a work of art in itself,’ writes Frieda Harmsen in the definitive monograph on his work. 2 These incised and painted panels remain what he is now best known for. The present artwork is a large example typical of Skotnes’ work in the late 1980s and 1990s, when his stark, bold, graphic representations softened somewhat and gave way to gentler shapes and more subtly varied