Strauss & co - 4 June 2018, Johannesburg

106 137 Anton Uys SOUTH AFRICAN 20TH CENTURY Metaphysical Boxes III signed and dated 1975 acrylic on canvas 104 by 175 cm R50 000 – 70 000 EXHIBITED: Ansdell Gallery, London, Anton Uys: Paintings, Collages, Graphics , 8–27 April 1975, illustrated in colour on the cover of the exhibition invitation. LITERATURE Michael Stevenson and Annabel Rosholt (2003). Moving in Time and Space: Shifts between Abstraction and Representation in Post-War South African Art , Cape Town: Michael Stevenson Contemporary. A similar example is illustrated in colour on page 40. In this work, Anton Uys embraces the principles of post-painterly abstraction with its hard edges and flat painted surfaces. He also engages with the aesthetics of Op Art where colour and shape are deployed to create playful visual illusions of depth and perspective on a flat surface. In the present lot, the row of pale, hollow, rectangular forms beside a row of solid similar forms coloured in wavy bands, continue into the distance almost to a point of infinity. The complex interrelationship of the angular forms perplexes the viewer and challenges the eye to disentangle the geometry of the composition. 1 1 Michael Stevenson and Annabel Rosholt (2003). Moving in Time and Space: Shifts between abstraction and representation in post-war South African art , Cape Town: Michael Stevenson Contemporary, page 40.