Strauss & co - September 2026 Highlights

1. Irma Stern (1933) The Irma Stern Trust Collection, Irma Stern’s™ early biography as written by her: SA Life and theWoman’s ForumDecember 7th 1933, online, accessed 7 August 2026. 2. Mona Berman (2003) Remembering Irma , Cape Town: Double Storey, page 53. 3. Edward Roworth (1934) ‘NotableWorks of Art’, Cape Times , 22 December. 4. Jeanne van Eeden (1998) ‘Irma Stern’s First Exhibition in Pretoria, 1933’, South African Journal of Art History , No. 13, page 90. 5. Ibid, page 100. 6. Esmé Berman (1970) Art & Artists of South Africa , Cape Town: A A Balkema, page 67. not escape contemporary critics. Edward Roworth, one of Stern’s earliest antagonists in the Cape press, observed in 1934 that she had strayed from“the straight and narrow ‘Expressionist’ path into the more flowery fields of realism”.3 It was, however, a qualified realism, one in which expressive colour – above all yellow – remained an irreducible fact. A note on the original owner: Dr Martin L du Toit was a prominent academic and an early champion of expressionism in the (fig 2) Malay (Black Headdress) (1946) Strauss & Co, Cape Town, 28 October 2025, lot 151, Sold R 21 731 250.00 (USD 1,336,282.81). Transvaal. He founded and edited the literary journal Die Nuwe Brandwag ( The New Sentinel , 1929–33, with cover designs by J H Pierneef ), and became the inaugural head of the Department of Cultural History and Art at the University of Pretoria. In 1933, Du Toit – previously a colleague of Stern’s former husband, Dr Johannes Prinz, at the University of Cape Town – invited Stern to exhibit at Macfadyen Hall in Pretoria.4 It was her first exhibition in the administrative capital. One newspaper characterised Stern as South Africa’s “wildest” painter5, but the critical reception was, on the whole, favourable, and the Pretoria Town Council acquired two paintings for its municipal collection. Stern returned to Pretoria in 1935 to exhibit at Glen’s Gallery. These activities preceded her participation in the art exhibition accompanying the Empire Exhibition of 1936, the large-scale festival held to mark Johannesburg’s golden jubilee. Du Toit served as chair and honorary curator of the art exhibition at the Johannes- burg Art Gallery. An illustrated catalogue featured Stern’s Orange Pickers on its cover. The exhibition is now widely regarded as the “first significant demonstration of critical recognition”of expressionism and other emergent modernist styles in South African painting.6