Strauss & co - 5 March 2018, Cape Town

316 590 Alexis Preller SOUTH AFRICAN 1911-1975 Ritual Bull signed and dated ‘62; inscribed with the title in another hand on the stretcher oil on canvas 85,5 by 100,5cm R   –    EXHIBITED A work entitled Ritual Bull was exhibited: Pieter Wenning Gallery, Johannesburg, 20 November to 4 December 1962, catalogue number 17. South African Association of Arts Gallery, Polley’s Arcade, Wachthuis, Pretoria, 15 to 31 October 1963, catalogue number 3. LITERATURE Esmé Berman and Karel Nel. (2009) Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows , Johannesburg: Shelf Publishing. Pages 199, 227, 254, 307, 367 and 387. By early 1962 Alexis Preller was satisfied that he had finally completed his Discovery mural for the newly complete Transvaal Provincial Administration Building in Pretoria. This ambitious work had occupied his attention from 1958 to 1962, its exacting detail and panoramic complexity had led to a process of working with large traced cartoons to transpose his initial drawings onto the 2,9 by 12,8 metre canvas before translating them into paint. In November 1962 Preller re-emerges from years of absence, brought about by the demanding and focused work on the mural, with the opening of his much-anticipated exhibition at the Pieter Wenning Gallery, Johannesburg. As is often the case with Preller, he produces two versions of Ritual Bull , one shown on this exhibition and the other, the following year, at the Association of Arts Gallery, Polley’s Arcade, Pretoria. The two distinctive versions are both made from the same tracing or cartoon and they display two markedly different approaches to the subject - one dark, mysterious and painterly and the other light, stylized and specifically graphic (the present lot).