Strauss & co - 8 - 11 November 2020

104 T O P L A C E A B I D C L I C K O N T H E R E D L O T N U M B E R 641 Kim Berman SOUTH AFRICAN 1960– Alex under Siege 5 and 6, from the State of Emergency series 1988 signed drypoint etching and monoprint on two sheets of paper in original hand- made frame 126 by 157 cm R30 000 – 50 000 ‘This work is from a series of eight panels made at the height of the second State of Emergency, decrying difficult living conditions in Alexandra township, whilst the artist was working for the ANC- aligned organisation Fund for a Free South Africa. The artist saw it as her role to bear witness to atrocities committed by the apartheid state. Berman was involved in smuggling banned images from the Afrapix photographic collective in South Africa to the anti-apartheid movement in exile, which inspired her own art-making. The images in Alex under Siege were inspired by documentary photographs taken in the 1980s by Peter Magubane, Alf Khumalo, Omar Badsha, Gideon Mendel and Paul Weinberg, some of whom belonged to the Afrapix photographic collective. Imprints of the full series are in the Constitutional Court Art Collection.’ 1 1.  Constitutional Court Art Collection (n.d.) ‘Kim Berman: Alex under Siege 1-8, 1986’, https://ccac.concourttrust. org.za/works/kim-berman-alex-under- siege-1-8-1986 642 Themba Khumalo SOUTH AFRICAN 1987– Bending Backwards signed, dated 15 and inscribed with the title in charcoal in the margin charcoal and pastel on paper 137 by 174 cm R30 000 – 40 000 PROVENANCE Private Collection, Johannesburg.