Strauss & co - 5 June 2017, Johannesburg

107 145 Walter Meyer SOUTH AFRICAN 1965– Abstract Composition signed and dated 88 mixed media on paper laid down on board 61 by 86 cm R20 000 – 30 000 To those more familiar with Walter Meyer’s local landscapes, the present lot will come as quite a surprise. The work fits into a period of enthusiastic experimentation by the artist while studying at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf in the late 1980s. Far removed from his Pretorian circle, and working then under Michael Buthe, he briefly fell under the sway of his tutor’s transgressive and esoteric style. He might also have been looking towards the successful American neo-expressionists. The present lot, with its unresolved vignettes, doodles from memory, gestural, automatic swipes of paint, and the sense of layered griffiti, might recall some Basquiat’s canvases, for instance, and it is perhaps no coincidence that the work was made the year the Brooklyn artist overdosed.