Strauss & co - 15 October 2018, Cape Town

182 447 Kenneth Bakker SOUTH AFRICAN 1926-1988 Relief Painting with Construction No. 2 signed and dated 80; signed, inscribed with the title and the artist’s address on the reverse mixed media relief construction 123 by 82,5cm R  –   PROVENANCE Purchased directly from the artist by the current owner. Kenneth Bakker and his artist wife, Bernadine Biden, lived in a beach chalet at Murdoch Valley in Simonstown. The state of his health limited his activity to the isolated setting of his home. He was primarily stimulated by the coastline and the ceaseless movements of the sea which, seen retrospectively, were influential factors in the nature of his work. Gradually he moved from recognizable visual images to abstract forms and finally to a non- figurative translation of his daily experiences. His abstract phase began with his exploration of abstract landscapes sculpted by shifting water on the rocks and the varied colours, shapes and textures of formations of moving sand. His compositions from the 1960s to 1970s remained essentially organic. This allowed him to invent variations on his own artistic idiom. Bakker achieved his effects by applying layers of oil-paint one upon the other and incorporating perspex as a medium which allowed him to produce a physically textured surface and to sculpt the elements of composition in relief. In the last phase of his creative life, his earlier informal shapes were replaced by a more mechanistic concept. His work became three-dimensional assemblages of overlapping sheets of perspex, resembling a modern architectural idiom and yet retaining the earlier quality of his metaphysical beach landscapes. Lots 447 - 451 form part of a single owner private collection.