Strauss & co - 2017 Mid-year Review

In a 2014 interview, Kentridge described painters Bill Ainslie and Robert Hodgins as important mentors. “Robert was someone who made the meaning from the work outwards. He took enormous pleasure and comfort from the daily activity of painting,” said Kentridge. Hodgins, who was born in 1920 but only came to prominence in the late 1980s, is an important figure whose long career as an artist – he died aged 89 in 2010 – points to the artificial division between modern and contemporary art. Hodgins, like Walter Battiss, for whom he jobbed as a printmaker, was always contemporary. Key Hodgins works continue to attract competitive bids. An Old Couple , acerbic figure study from 2005, fetched R1 000 384 (high estimate R500 000). Penny Siopis took up a lectureship at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1984, a year after Hodgins retired from his teaching position at this important art school.Two years later she produced Allsorts , a representative example of her 1980s accumulationist style of painting. The work sold for R511 560, pipping its high estimate and confirming the upward trajectory of this important contemporary painter at market. Penny Siopis Allsorts Sold R511 560 Robert Hodgins An Old Couple Sold R1 000 384 16