Peter Haden - Almost Forgotten

9 On show – Exhibiting in South Africa, 1968 to 1971 Haden’s first solo exhibition took place at the Lidchi Gallery in Johannesburg in 1965, with paintings and sculpture on show. His first exhibition at the Egon Guenther Gallery was ‘Peter Haden, Hannes Harrs, Sydney Kumalo, Ezrom Legae, Edoardo Villa and the Unknown Masters of Africa’, which opened on 12 November 1968. He exhibited a number of small bronzes including Sitting- foot (6.3cm high), Ball-foot (11.5cm high) and Rider (15cm high). The small sculptures were originally made in terracotta and plaster of Paris before being cast in bronze. Haden commented that there seemed ‘no really good reason to make enormous things if one could say the same thing in a smaller size’: Some of his pieces are small enough to fit into a match box. And yet looking at them this seems somehow beyond the imagination because in his smallest pieces he achieves monumentality. South Africa, fraught though it is, throws up its own innovation. You might say that Peter Haden is an innovation. (Eskapa , ‘Student Exhibition at the Academy’, Artlook 26 , January 1969, pp. 6–7). In 1969, Haden took part in the Transvaal Academy’s exhibition ‘African Sculpture’, which took place in the gardens of the Johannesburg Municipal Library. His entry Torso , in plaster of Paris (exhibit number 101), was available in a bronze cast for R1 400. Sydney Kumalo and Ezrom Legae were fellow exhibitors. To put the price of Haden’s sculpture into perspective Kumalo’s fabulous large sculpture The Listener was priced at R1 800 while Legae’s Young Man cost only R500! Haden iconic Rain King and Rain Queen were also conceived in 1969 and Rain Queen was displayed in the Egon Guenther Gallery: Art lovers bought all of the numbered bronze casts within three days. ‘Nothing like that has ever happened before, in my 24 years of running art galleries’ says Mr Egon Guenther … There was no formal exhibition. ‘The first visitor who arrived singled it out, said ‘I like that’ and bought it’ said Mr. Guenther ‘after that, whoever walked in bought one, until in three days all 10 casts were sold’. The price of a cast was R240. (‘10 Sculptures go in 3 Days’, The Star , July 1969). Haden was one of the artists chosen for the ‘Transvaal Artists ’69’ exhibition at the Durban Art Gallery. He exhibited Rain King (cat 7), Rain Queen (cat 8) and Mother and Child (cat 9). The exhibition featured 38 works by 13 Transvaal artists and ran from 3 to 19 October. Haden’s second exhibition at the Egon Guenther Gallery was a two-man show with Cecil Skotnes (Woodcuts), which opened on 21 October 1969. The exhibition was highly successful, not least because the famous American novelist Irving Stone (author of The Agony and the Ecstasy and Lust for Life) attended the exhibition and purchased two of Haden’s bronzes of the Rain Queen : Stone is reputed to be a collector of Impressionist and pre- Columbian sculpture and apart from those of Barbara Hepworth, Kenneth Armitage and Henry Moore, has never bought any contemporary sculptures. (‘Stone Buys Bronzes’, The Star , 22 October 1969). Reviewing the same exhibition, Richard Cheales wrote: With a ‘rain king’ and a ‘rain queen’ setting the theme in his small exhibition, Peter Haden stresses elongated vertical shapes in a section of his latest sculpture. In the rain ‘duo’ he gives a more dramatic interpretation of the small, chunky pieces that were such a feature in his last show, with monolithic shapes soaring upwards from the (in contrast) solid bases of the compositions. This style (with its suggestion of ‘roots’ in past, ancient times) has a strikingly decorative quality, faintly Egyptian, faintly primitive, the seated figures are conceived in a