Strauss & co - 13 November 2017, Johannesburg

252 326 Ernest Mancoba SOUTH AFRICAN 1904–2002 Head signed carved teak height: 15 cm R50 000 – 80 000 PROVENANCE A gift from the artist to Elsa Dziomba EXHIBITED Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, Hand in Hand , 1994–1995. befriended Lippy Lipschitz who recommended that he acquaint himself with Negro Primitive Sculpture , the seminal text on the classic art of West and Central Africa by Guillaume and Munro. Mancoba, inspired by the images and text, internalized the contents. Subsequently, he freed himself of the naturalistic viewpoint he had followed in his previous carvings. Inspired, he carves Faith in 1936 (whereabouts unknown) and Head (Lot 326) which both exemplify the African Renaissance in his oeuvre. Head reinterprets the features of the two boys who posed for Future Africa into a kind of African mask expressing unutterable sorrow. In an interview of 1938 Mancoba observed: ‘My carvings are made to show Africa to the white man. That is why they are sad’. 1 By reinterpreting the mood of the two boys as expressed in Future Africa in a masklike African manner the artist dedicates Head to his brother Ronnie, inscribing it R Mancoba (Ro…). The provenance of Head is most interesting. When Mancoba returned to the Rand from Cape Town in 1936 he carried a letter of introduction written by Lipschitz to the sculptress Elsa Dziomba (1902–70). Mancoba looked her up in her studio, presented the letter and they became friends. When Mancoba decided to further his art studies in Paris she was among the referees supporting Mancoba’s application of a loan and grant of 100 pounds sterling from the Bantu Welfare Trust. Mancoba highly regarded Dziomba’s art. Before he left for Europe in 1938, in acknowledgement of their friendship, he gave Head to her. Many years later Dziomba told her friend Hermien Domisse McCaul that she knew the gifted Ernest Mancoba who left for Paris to study art and she gave Head to her friend. A year before Dziomba died Domisse wrote an in-depth article on Dziomba’s art for the December 1969 edition of Artlook . When Domisse McCaul learned that the Johannesburg Art Gallery was hosting Hand in Hand , a retrospective exhibition of the art of Ernest Mancoba and his Danish wife Sonja Ferlov, she informed the gallery of the piece she held and without any ado Head was collected and included in the show. Within the context of the collection of carvings by Mancoba for Hand in Hand the importance of Head cannot be over-emphasized. Owing to the fact that the whereabouts of Faith is unknown, Head is the earliest carving so far located, showing Mancoba’s breach with the naturalism of his earlier representations. This piece, expressing the spirit of Africa is a benchmark within the South African context. To attend the opening of Hand in Hand in 1994 Mancoba visited South Africa for the first time after his departure in 1938. His son Wonga (1947–2015) accompanied him; Sonja Ferlov, his wife, had died in 1984. McCaul, who only knew of Mancoba through Dziomba, was keen to make his acquaintance and invited him and his son to an afternoon tea at her home in Auckland Park. They enjoyed a memorable afternoon and reminisced about their mutual friend, Dziomba, Greek drama and philosophy as well as Shakespeare. Elza Miles 1 See Elza Miles (1994), Lifeline out of Africa , Cape Town: Human and Rousseau, p.34. continued from page 250