Strauss & co - Review 2019

16 The other big highlight from the Shill Collection was Alexis Preller’s seminal cabinet painting from 1952, Collected Images (Orchestration of Themes). Illustrated on the cover of Esmé Berman and Karel Nel’s authoritative 2009 Preller monograph, Collected Images features compartments furnished with Prelleresque vignettes or objects. The work sold for just over R10 million, the highest price ever paid for a Preller work at auction in South Africa. The March sale confirmed the importance of Strauss & Co’s four annual live sales as South Africa’s premier venue for the disposal of high-value art collectables. Except for one lot sold in the February contemporary sale, the 20 highest-grossing lots sold in 2019 were all traded at the company’s four live sales in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The momentum established by the record- breaking March sale was sustained in subsequent sales. In May (Johannesburg), Stern’s Still Life with Fruit and Dahlias sold for R16.16 million, a new world record for a still life by this Cape innovator. The May sale also featured a remarkable consignment of bronzes by Anton van Wouw that included five castings from five different international foundries. “Van Wouw’s artistic bronze of Paul Kruger is one of the most important historical works to have passed through Strauss & Co’s hands in recent years,” said Strauss & Co executive director Susie Goodman after the sale. “The work drew considerable interest during our preview. Audiences want to learn more about our country’s history through our art, and this powerful Van Wouw artwork certainly provided that.” Stern cemented her first-class status at the October sale (CapeTown) when a portrait of a young Tutsi woman in a Rwandan landscape sold for R10.25 million. Started in 1946, during Stern’s second trip to the Great Lakes region, A Watussi Woman with Mountains was completed a year later and exhibited in Cape Town and Paris in short order. “There was strong bidding for the blue- chip moderns, with Stern and Pierneef once again demonstrating resilience, notwithstanding perceptions of a sluggish South African market for art,” said Strauss & Co’s joint managing director Bina Genovese shortly after the penultimate session of the R56.3-million grossing October sale.