Strauss & co - 17 February 2018, Cape Town

In 2013 Strauss & Co sold an untitled sculpture by Jane Alexander, a companion piece to her seminal The Butcher Boys (1986), for the world-record price of R5 456 640. Collector interest in contemporary art continues to grow – an enthusiasm that was palpable at the company’s inaugural specialist sale in 2018. Multiple telephone bidders competed for Mongezi Ncaphayi’s ink and mixed-media diptych, Treasure Hunt (2017), which eventually sold for R193 256, trebling the high estimate. Bidding at this specialist auction was robust from the outset, with works by Zander Blom and David Koloane selling for above their high estimates. The top lot of the contemporary sale was a charcoal drawing from William Kentridge’s stop-animation film, Felix in Exile (1994), which fetched R2 273 600. A generation older than both Kentridge and Koloane, Robert Hodgins performed well too. Appropriately titled Drunk in the Docks (1996-97), an autobiographical painting evoking London-born Hodgins’s arrival at Cape Town’s harbour in 1938, sold for R1 250 480.Also by Hodgins, Stones in a Pink Field (2000) achieved R852 600. Mongezi Ncaphayi, Treasure Hunt, diptych Sold R193 256 William Kentridge, Felix in Exile Sold R2 273 600 Zander Blom, Untitled 1.709 Sold R85 260