Strauss & co - 2015 Review

2015 in Review by Sean O’Toole Collectors of South African art have long favoured painting. This orientation is reflected in the strong focus on painting in every Strauss & Co auction. Painting remained the dominant medium in the company’s 2015 auctions. The November sale of Alexis Preller’s oil and gesso work The Creation of Adam I (1968) for R8 526 000 was a particular highlight. It set a new auction South African record for the artist. Overall, the auction market remained remarkably buoyant in 2015. Notwithstanding social and economic volatility in the marketplace, Strauss & Co continued to produce benchmark prices for South African art at auction, with sculpture emerging as themedium that consistently delivered the biggest surprises. In March, Cape Town artist Ed Young’s super-realist prosthetic sculpture Arch (2010), a jovial work portraying retired Anglican bishop Desmond Tutu swinging from a chandelier, sold for R852600. It was a record for the artist. The outstanding result confirmed a robust appetite for contemporary sculpture amongst collectors. In 2013 Strauss & Co sold an untitled student work from 1986 by Jane Alexander for R5 456 640. Alexander’s sculptures are rarely traded on the art market. The result was a major news event that established a world record for this Cape Town- based artist and educator. In June, a 1994 sculpture of a metre-and-a-half tall hooded figure entitled Serviceman sold for R966 280. The Young and Alexander sales, both of which achieved in excess of their pre-sale estimates, marked an important point of consolidation. Despite intensifying economic headwinds, Strauss & Co is posting consistently strong sales in the contemporary sector. It has confirmed reputations set in the primary market and set reliable benchmark prices for a number of living artists. Encouragingly, these results extend to a number of early career artists under 40. Despite a noticeable diversification in tastes, canonical masters like Anton van Wouw and inventive moderns like Wolf Kibel, Erik Laubscher and Alexis Preller continue to retain their lustre. The work of earlier twentieth-century artists continues to attract diverse bidders. In this regard, 2015 saw previously undervalued figures like Robert Hodgins, Ernest Mancoba, Cecily Sash and Lucas Sithole post strong results and make substantial gains. MASTERS In October, a rare bronze cast by Utrecht-born sculptor Anton van Wouw sold for R4 774 560, fetching one-and-a-half times its pre-sale high estimate. Miner with Hand Drill (1911) is a superb realist portrayal of a mine labourer working at a rockface. Two years ago Strauss & Co sold an edition of this coveted work, cast at the Massa foundry in Rome, for R2 005 200. The excellent 2015 result ratifies Van Wouw’s pedigree at auction. It also confirms the durability of his mining-themed bronzes as collectables. In 1981, a bronze portraying a solitary black mineworker with pneumatic rock drill (the work dates from 1926) sold for R80 000. It was a record at the time. Strauss & Co has achieved consistently strong sales for early South African masters. They include VanWouw’s godson and pupil, JH Pierneef, whose work was the subject of an extensive survey exhibition at the Standard Bank Gallery this year. In March, Strauss & Co sold two Pierneef landscapes: a gorgeous casein painting from 1928 depicting trees and clouds on the veld, and a 1929 oil portraying a mountain landscape near Ficksburg. Important Afrikaner educator Samuel Henri Pellissier previously owned the latter work. Both works surpassed their pre-sale estimates, the mountain landscape fetching R1 818 880. Strauss & Co currently holds key auction records for work by painters Frans Oerder ( Magnolias , sold for R1 782 400 in 2009), Hugo Naude ( Namaqualand in Spring , sold for R1 559 600 in 2011) and Pieter Wenning ( At Claremont , sold for R1 782 400 in 2011). The solid market for canonical artists from the founding years of South Africa’s art market will likely see Van Wouw’s strong showing at auction in 2015 repeated by other artists of his period and pedigree. MODERNS There are various milestones in the chronology of abstract painting in South Africa, amongst them Ernest Mancoba’s 1938 decision to go into exile in Paris. Despite various attempts to clarify Mancoba’s significance locally, notably by historian Elza Miles and more recently artist Kemang wa Lehulere in his 2015 Standard Bank Young Artist Award exhibition, Mancoba remains a somewhat elusive figure in South Africa. In June, Strauss & Co offered a rare wood sculpture by Mancoba, who trained as a wood sculptor but pegged his ambitions as a painter. It was the first time a sculpture by Mancoba was offered for sale in the South Africa. Musician sold for R613 872. The enthusiastic response by bidders to Mancoba’s work points to the recalibration of value amongst a broader base of collectors, in particular as they rediscover value in work by this country’s inventive and exploratory moderns. The market for work by important artists from the inter- and post-war years is flourishing. Artists like Walter Battiss, Christo Coetzee, Wolf Kibel, Maggie Laubser, Douglas Portway, Alexis Preller, Gerard Sekoto, Cecil Skotnes, Irma Stern, Edoardo Villa and Jean Welz have all proven bankable lots on past Strauss & Co auctions. In 2015, Preller conjured auction room magic when two works produced after his visit to Greece and Turkey in 1968 went on sale. The Creation of Adam I (1968), a work that interprets the form of early-Grecian sculpture, sold for R8 526 000, a South African record for the artist. Apollo Kouros II (1971), a later work from the same extended cycle of mystical semi-figurative paintings, achieved R5 456 640. Unlike Preller, who enjoyed significant acclaim during his lifetime, the expressionist painter Wolf Kibel died unheralded. Following his early death in 1938 critics and collectors alike have moved to recuperate Kibel’s reputation. The March sale of a portrait of the artist’s son, Joseph , 16