Strauss & co - 20 May 2019, Johannesburg

8 Bill Ainslie Bill Ainslie (Lot 108) started the Johannesburg Art Foundation informally in 1972 and headed the institution until his untimely death in 1989. Assisted by Jenny Stadler (Lot 107), the Foundation saw such artists as William Kentridge (Lots 145, 146, and 149 among others), Sam Nhlengethwa (Lots 120, 138, 275 and 291), Pat Mautloa, David Koloane (Lot 137), Helen Joseph (Lot 174), Penny Siopis (Lot 286), Diana Hyslop (Lots 92 and 106), Amos Letsoalo, Sholto Ainslie, Sophia Ainslie, Lucas Seage, Helen Sebidi, Mandla Nkosi, Anthousu Satiriades, David Rousseau, Lionel Murcott, and Lettie Gardiner start their artistic careers. Ainslie promoted abstract art practice, as is evident in the paper he read at the State of Art in South Africa conference at UCT in 1979: ‘If one looks at art in retrospect, one finds more and more, that one of the challenges to artists is to use art to define the limits of art. That is – it’s moved away from creating illusions of other realities, of imitating nature. Now painting stands there for what it is. To see how it’s made, in a sense. There is no attempt to disguise the media. Not to pervert or to paint what is extraneous. To do what paint can do. Paint has the quality Teachers and Students of colour and to make marks. These marks in colour can be used to convey a whole range of emotional experiences, exclamations and celebrations.’ 1 Ainslie was instrumental in the Thupelo Project of the mid-1980s through which many black South African artists were introduced to Abstract Expressionism, to the chagrin of the political opposition of the time who demanded socio-realistic art criticising the ruling apartheid regime. Elizabeth Castle expands: ‘The Johannesburg Art Foundation maintained a teaching philosophy which opposed any form of discrimination and stressed that art education should be a possibility for everyone. There was no prescribed curriculum and the programme was not dependent on an external educational authority. In the decade 1982–1992, the South African apartheid government’s educational policy towards cultural activities was prescriptive, stifling and potentially paralysing for many artists. Nevertheless, the teaching at the Johannesburg Art Foundation sustained a flexibility and tolerance of ideas combined with an emancipatory ambition that promoted exchange. The philosophy was infused with a social justice and a political activism agenda squarely in opposition to the separatist apartheid education laws.’ 2 1. Bill Ainslie (1979) Paper read at The State of Art in South Africa conference at the University of Cape Town, Cape Town, July. 2. Elizabeth Castle (2015) Encounters with the Controversial Teaching Philosophy of the Johannesburg Art Foundation in the Development of South African Art during 1982–1992 , University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, unpublished Master’s dissertation, page 3. Heather Martienssen The festschrift, Art and Articles , accompanied by a portfolio of prints by students and colleagues (Lot 206) presented to her on her retirement in 1972, is a fit and proper tribute to architect, in 1939, one of the first women graduates from the faculty at Wits. Her husband, Rex, reinforced her interest in Modernism: he had studied under Le Corbusier in Paris and reflected the European International Style in his buildings and houses in Johannesburg in the 1930s. Martienssen crossed over to Fine Art, and obtained her degree in 1940. This was followed by a Master’s degree under the famous art critic, Vernon Lee. After a brief stint at the Courtauld Institute of Art, she went on to obtain a PhD at the University of London in 1949. As the head of the Department of Fine Art at Wits, Martienssen not only held sway over a strong group of lecturers that included Joyce Leonard, Marjorie Long, Erica Berry, Douglas Portway (Lot 282), Maria Stein-Lessing and Willem Hendrikz, she also mentored such prominent artists as Anna Vorster, Nils Burwitz, Judith Mason (Lot 143), Margaret McKean (Lot 179 and 181) Patrick O’Connor and Cecily Sash (Lots, 151, 152, and 270). Esmé Berman, a student at Wits in the late 1940s says of Martienssen: ‘She had given order and direction, and in co-operation with the small but accomplished team of practical teachers, helped to make the [Fine Art] department prominent among South African art training institutions.’ 1 1. Esmé Berman (1983) Art and Artists of South Africa , Cape Town: AA Balkema, page 384. Heather Martienssen, an art teacher at the University of the Witwatersrand for a good quarter of a century. It is a testimony to the wide range of her interests, from classical Greek art and architecture, to Caravaggio and Pierneef, as well as to her success as an art teacher. Such prominent artists as Cecil Skotnes (Lots 150, 153, 158, 268, and 269), Larry Scully (Lot 115), Nel Erasmus (Lot 165), Christo Coetzee (Lots 116, 280, 302, 304 and 305) and Gordon Vorster (Lot 63), known as the Wits Group, passed through her hands, each of whom went on to a highly successful artistic career. The common denominator is perhaps that these artists all in some or other unique and significant way, contributed to the shift from naturalistic representation to a more modern, abstract idiom in South African art. Martienssen initially qualified as an Bill Ainslie Heather Martienssen The Wits Group: Heather Martienssen, Esmé Berman, Erica Berry, Larry Scully, Joyce Leonard and Nel Erasmus.