Strauss & co - 18 March 2019, Cape Town

180 The Mavis and Louis Shill Collection 564 Sydney Kumalo SOUTH AFRICAN 1935–1988 Bull signed with the artist’s initial and numbered VII/X bronze with verdigris patina height: 13,5 cm R  –   PROVENANCE Stephan Welz & Co. In Association with Sotheby’s, Johannesburg, 30 November 1987, lot 434. Stephan Welz & Co. In Association with Sotheby’s, Johannesburg, 21 March 1994, lot 57. The Shill Collection. Sydney Kumalo was introduced to the tradition of Modernist sculpture by his mentor, Eduardo Villa, whom he met during his time teaching at the Polly Street Art Centre (where he enrolled as a student in 1952). There, under the tutelage of Cecil Skotnes, he developed a unique sense of line in his drawing that would later translate into his anthropomorphically sculpted forms of animals and figures. The present lot relates a drawing titled Bull produced in 1966, where the shape and reductive pattern of the beast’s horns and ribcage are clearly visible. Strauss & Co is privileged to offer four lots from the Mavis and Louis Shill Collection. This important collection of early- to mid-twentieth century South African paintings and sculpture is an expression of Mavis and Louis Shill’s union which endured for 58 happy years. It was Cape Town-born Mavis who introduced Witbank-born Louis Shill to art collecting. In fact, Mavis still owns a painting by Nerine Desmond which she acquired before they got married. She recalls that their first joint purchase was a work by Sidney Goldblatt. The Shill Collection spans a formative period of South African art and was assembled without the aid of advisors. “We collected together, in a partnership,”says Mavis. “Louis sometimes indulged my taste, and I his, but we never bought anything we didn’t both like and agree on.”Curiosity and intuition, complemented by reading and participation in civic life, were the bedrock of their collecting philosophy. The 1970s marked an important turning point for the burgeoning Shill Collection, with the acquisition of two highly important pieces, one by Irma Stern and the other by Alexis Preller. Produced in 1952, Preller’s seminal work, Collected Images , depicts a cabinet with 18 compartments. A resonant catalogue of the artist’s key metaphors, the work is illustrated on the cover of Esmé Berman and Karel Nel’s 2009 monograph on Preller. Although familiar with many prominent dealers and collectors, including Reinhold Cassirer and Dennis Hotz, Mavis never met Preller. She did, however, briefly encounter Stern, whose paintings she esteemed and focussed on. Stern’s commanding portrait, Meditation, Zanzibar (1939), originates from the painter’s first visit to Zanzibar. Stern was keenly aware of the second-class status of women in this former sultanate in the Indian Ocean. Her portrait is marked by the great dignity and melancholy of its sitter. The work was acquired in 1972 to hang in their new family home in Dunkeld, Johannesburg. The Shill Collection also includes works by Gwelo Goodman and Sydney Kumalo, both influential artists in their day. Goodman’s Interior Looking Out, Stellenrust , is a delightfully observed impressionist study of Stellenrust, a Stellenbosch wine farm founded in 1928, and emanates from another prominent single-owner collection. Kumalo was one of South Africa’s most important mid-twentieth century sculptors, with bulls a recurring motif in his powerfully modernist archive. The private collector has long been a bulwark of the South African art world. In 1984 Mavis Shill organised the exhibition Private Art for Public Viewing in Johannesburg to showcase important works held in private collections. The exhibition of 60 pieces included Preller’s Collected Images . “Never buy just for investment,”she advised in an interview from the time. “Purchase paintings you love. And rather buy a good watercolour than an inferior oil.” 1 Thirty-five years on and her opinions remain unchanged. “Live, work and collect for today – not tomorrow. You have to love and value what you buy. The collection I grew and built with Louis always gave me a great deal of pleasure.” 1. – Style magazine (1984), September, page 63.