Strauss & co - 18 March 2019, Cape Town

194 The Late Sol Munitz Collection Sol Munitz was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, to Lithuanian parents, Tzila (nee Jakubson) and Samuel Munitz. The youngest of three children, (his brother Morris and his sister Rachael having been born in Lithuania), the family arrived in South Africa aboard the steamer Gaika , on March 21, 1926, when Sol was approximately four months old; his life representing a link between the old world and a new land of hope, after the antisemitism in South America and the pogroms of eastern Europe. The family settled at 11 Spencer Street, in Maitland, with Sol’s father finding employment as a butcher whilst his mother worked as a dress maker. In his early years Sol used to deliver dresses on his bicycle to the nurses at Alexandra Hospital in Maitland. At school, Sol is remembered as a dashing young man who excelled at sports, attending SACS when the school was still housed on Orange Street, today the home of the Michaelis School of Fine Art at UCT. It was sometime during this period that Sol first met Irma Stern, again on his bicycle, presumably making another delivery for his mother. With Sol’s charm leaving an impression on Stern; the two would later become friends, with Sol procuring works directly from the artist’s studio at the Firs in Rosebank. Sol’s collecting would continue to develop under the tutelage of his wife, Hazel (nee Abelman) and his cousin, Jean Bernard who, together with her husband Hymie introduced Sol to many of the artists who would later come to fill his collection at 22 Oak Avenue in Kenilworth, fondly referred to as“The Coppers”. The works on offer from the Munitz Collection thus echo this history with examples from Jean Welz, François Krige, Ruth Prowse and Stanley Pinker all featuring in a body of work that signifies an important part of South Africa’s artistic history. Most important among this uniquely focussed collection are two works from Stern’s Zanzibar period, The Mauve Sari (1946) which depicts its sitter beautifully draped in silks of delicate hues of colour that Stern described in her travel diaries as “saris that were as fine as cobwebs, or brocaded in real gold”. Dating from the same period is Portrait of an Arab (1945), which is a previously unrecorded portrait of a member of the Omani nobility from the court of the Sultan of Zanzibar. Purchased directly from the artist, the significance of the painting provides new historical insight into Sterns travels and reveals her acute observations of exotic cultures and peoples, bringing into sharp focus an entry from her Zanzibar diary where she describes “White bearded figures belonging to another age – a thousand years or more back; gold glistening on their coats, silk woven into their rainbow coloured turbans, wound artfully, each particular race having a different traditional way. Their hands gesticulating, their faces expressed depths of suffering, profound wisdom and full understanding of all the pleasures of life – faces alive with life’s experiences”. The balance of the Late Sol Munitz Collection will be included in Strauss & Co’s April 2019 Online Auction (www.straussonline.co.za ). Sol standing in front of his two siblings, Morris and Rachael.