Strauss & co - 13 November 2017, Johannesburg

254 327 Gerard Sekoto SOUTH AFRICAN 1913–1993 Women in the Country executed circa 1946–47 signed oil on canvas laid down on board 60 by 45 cm R2 500 000 – 3 500 000 EXHIBITED Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg, Gerard Sekoto: Unsevered Ties , 1 November 1989 – 10 February 1990, catalogue number 62. Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, in association with Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, A Portrait of South Africa: George Hallett, Peter Clarke and Gerard Sekoto , 30 October 2013 – 27 November 2013. LITERATURE Lesley Spiro (ed.) (1989). Gerard Sekoto: Unsevered Ties , Johannesburg: Johannesburg Art Gallery. Illustrated in colour on page 83. Barbara Lindop and Chloë Reid (eds.) (2013). Song for Sekoto: Gerard Sekoto 1913–2013 , Johannesburg: The Gerard Sekoto Foundation. Illustrated in colour on page 101. In 1945, following a lengthy stay in Cape Town, Gerard Sekoto moved to Eastwood, a run-down black settlement outside Pretoria, to live with his mother and stepfather. Sekoto knew he wanted to move to Paris, but viewed his relocation upcountry as a necessary prelude: ‘Before leaving, however, I wanted to dig into my ancestral roots, as I no longer believed that the tradition of my forefathers was evil.’ 1 However, unable to visit the village of his Pedi forebears Sekoto turned to his immediate environment. Already attuned to describing aspects of black urban life from his extended sojourns in Sophiatown and District Six, Sekoto went on to produce gregarious studies of domesticity and street life marked by their formal innovation and painterly maturity. It is widely acknowledged that the paintings Sekoto produced in the two-year period between his arrival in Eastwood and his departure for France in 1947 represent the highpoint of his artistic career. Acknowledged masterpieces like Sixpence a Door (1946) and Song of the Pick (1946) date from this keynote period. Writing in the catalogue that accompanied Sekoto’s first major retrospective exhibition, held at the Johannesburg Art Gallery in 1989, curator Lesley Spiro notes: ‘It was a time when he pushed his understanding of colour and form to new heights, when he seemed to sharpen even further his already remarkable sense of mood and movement.’ 2 Women in the Country (Lot 327) is a product of this fertile period and was included on Spiro’s landmark 1989 exhibition. She identified the painting as bearing many of the hallmarks of Sekoto’s Eastwood period, continued on page 256