Strauss & co - Review 2009

Athlete Balancing on his Hands signed, foundry mark C Valsuani Cire Perdue bronze, with dark green patina, height: 103 cm SOLD R401 040, OCTOBER 2009 Fanie Eloff S OUTH A FRICAN 1885-1947 World Record Being the grandson of Paul Kruger and a member of an affluent family, Fanie Eloff was not constrained by having to earn a living. From 1900 he spent most of his creative life in Paris where he encountered a cultural and social milieu sympathetic to his art. He is the only South African known to have met Auguste Rodin, whose treatment of the human form made a great impression on him. Eloff’s preferred subject of athletes and dancers, informed by his early studies in anatomy, display his sound knowledge and love of the sinuous male body in motion. A thlete Balancing on his Hands , like his numerous studies of sportsmen, the most famous of which is the Discus Thrower at the entrance to Loftus Versfeld Sports Grounds, is a powerful and poetic celebration of the ideal male form. According to Dr F. C. L. Bosman, “It is the artist’s studies of figures in bronze, which above all others, bear the unmistakeable stamp of his individual style”. Dr F.C.L. Bosman, Our Art , Vol 2, SA Association for the Advancement of Knowledge and Culture, Pretoria, 1961, p 116. Jacob Hendrik Pierneef and Fanie Eloff were school- fellows at the old Staatsmodelskool in Pretoria and became lifelong friends, the former being a great supporter of the sculptor and delivering his memorial exhibition speech. However, their art could not be more diverse. Acclaimed as the foremost interpreter of the South African landscape and of the Highveld in particular, Pierneef’s primary quest, according to Esmé Berman, was for harmony and order derived from architectonic structure and translated into distinctive compositions. Esmé Berman, The Story of South African Painting, A. A. Balkema, Cape Town, 1975, pp 37-44. 10