Strauss & co - 20 May 2019, Johannesburg

89 181 Margaret McKean SOUTH AFRICAN 1936– Reclining Nude signed and dated 02 oil on canvas 100,5 by 125,5 cm R50 000 – 70 000 Thanks to a Transvaal Chamber of Mines Bursary, Margaret McKean came under the sway of Professor Heather Martienssen at the University of the Witwatersrand in the mid-1950s. She continued her training at the Académie Julian in Paris, and the Central School of Art in London. There she worked alongside the British Surrealist Merlyn Evans who, incidentally, had been an influential teacher at the Durban Art School from 1939. The present Lot, a startling, offbeat, detonation of colour, is a fine example of the artist’s mature style, and borrows freely from Picasso or Botero’s lusty, flesh- bursting bodies. It shows a racy, densely modelled and semi-nude bather, her skin touched by the sun, presumably, and turned dramatic shades of pink and plum. One might expect the hulking bather to be sinking into sand, but her weight pulls only the slightest tension across the simple white sheet. Slender turquoise masts pierce the top corners of the sheet, and give some sense of the height at which the figure is suspended. A coastline, defined by deep purple, peach and blue, runs towards the horizon, while disembodied hands appear on the margins.