Strauss & co - Review 2009

26 Wolf Kibel S OUTH A FRICAN 1903-1938 World Record Self Portrait oil on canvas laid-down on board, 43 by 39,5 cm SOLD R1 225 400, OCTOBER 2009 This rare self-portrait, featured on the dust jacket and frontispiece of Kibel’s monograph, achieved a world record price at Strauss & Co.’s inaugural Cape Town sale. According to Neville Dubow: “It is a remarkable statement whose emotional content is carried as much by its overall treatment as by the characterisation of the face. The painted area corresponding to the sitter’s shirt is composed of great rivers of broken white interspersed with tiny spatterings of local colour, the whole bifurcated by the red gash of a tie. Its effect is one of an upward surge of nervous energy capped and stilled by the face. It is a compelling image.” Freda Kibel and Neville Dubow, Wolf Kibel, Human & Rousseau, Cape Town, 1968, pp 42-43.