Strauss & co - 7 October 2019, Cape Town

193 600 Wolf Kibel SOUTH AFRICAN 1903-1938 Hatfield Street, Cape Town indistinctly inscribed; inscribed with the artist’s name and title on a Wolpe Gallery label adhered to the stretcher oil on canvas 22 by 29,5cm R120 000 - 160 000 PROVENANCE Purchased from the Wolpe Gallery 1 March 1983. Sanlam Art Collection. Sanlam Art Deaccession 2014, where it was purchased by the current owner. likened in literary terms to poetry. He drew on culture, memory and interpretation, infusing his works with great emotion and individuality. Works are often small in scale because of his limited means and generally of an intimate and enigmatic nature, revealing his sensitive nature. During his short period of production, from his arrival in Cape Town in 1929 until his death in 1938, he worked at a fevered pace against these handicaps. While Kibel is typically compared with Soutine and Pascin, contemporary European Expressionists, he had a wide appreciation for and was exposed to a lot of art from which he drew inspiration. This is evidenced by the different stylistic approaches in these two figural works. Kibel’s sitters seldom have their names included in the titles but these portraits – gentle, enigmatic and introspective, reveal the artist’s sensitive personality. He found sanctuary in the company of and shared studio space with Lippy Lipschitz at Palm Studios in Roeland Street, close to Hatfield Street, the subject of lot 600. Under Kibel’s brush, this urban landscape is imbued with a tension between the man-made street and a turbulent sea of verdant foliage. Kibel’s use of perspective is frequently employed in his urban landscapes and this has been credited with the increase of compositional dynamism in these works.