Strauss & co - 7 October 2019, Cape Town

236 645 Walter Battiss SOUTH AFRICAN 1906-1982 Untitled (Figures in Blue and Red) signed oil on canvas 49,5 by 59cm R400 000 - 600 000 Untitled (Figures in Blue and Red) and Group Scene are typical of the gregarious scenes of an imagined Africa produced by Walter Battiss in the 1960s, some inspired by his trips to the Limpopo Valley. His portrayal of clusters of anonymous figures stacked in a depthless space reiterates insights obtained from his close observation and study of rock engravings (petroglyphs) and rock paintings of South Africa’s earliest inhabitants. His paintings nonetheless reveal a complicated process of influence, assimilation, translation and – importantly – rejection. “The rock painters were not seduced by colour,”Battiss noted in 1945. “In the contemplation of rock art one is led back to the serenity and dignity of statement made with the machinery of form rather than of colour.” 1 Battiss, by contrast, was a joyful colourist who subordinated the precision of formal statement to the magnificence of colour. Form and LITERATURE Karin Skawran (ed.) (2005) Walter Battiss: Gentle Anarchist , Johannesburg: The Standard Bank Gallery. Illustrated in colour on page 111.