Strauss & co - Review 2021

Strauss & Co’s first sale of 2021, an online-only auction in February, drew 795 bidders from over 12 countries. The sale netted a respectable auction total of R7.72 million with a 70% lot sell-through rate. The top-selling individual lot was a vibrant recto-verso painting by post-war painter Walter Battiss which sold for R152 425. The result was an early indicator of collector sentiment in 2021. “The focus of collectors was firmly on proven custodians of value,” says Frank Kilbourn in reference to the noticeable preference among premium collectors for established historical artists. Battiss forms part of an elite group of artists who are regularly traded on the secondary market. They include William Kentridge, Maggie Laubser, JH Pierneef, Alexis Preller and Irma Stern, all of whom posted solid results in 2021. Where in 2020 six Stern paintings featured in the list of the ten most expensive works sold at auction, in 2021 Pierneef and Preller attracted the lion’s share of interest. The top-selling individual artwork at Strauss & Co in 2021 was Pierneef’s 1952 landscape, Bushveld, Pafuri, which sold to a telephone bidder for R11.6 million in November. Pierneef was the subject of enthusiastic bidding throughout 2021. In April, six telephone bidders and one committed online bidder vied for his late masterpiece, Baobabs , which depicts this iconic tree in an unpeopled northern landscape. The lot went to a telephone bidder for R5.1 million. Paintings with arboreal subjects by Pierneef are immensely popular. Fierce bidding in November culminated in Doringboom (Thorn Tree) , a rust-coloured composition from 1943, selling for R3.2 million. The top-selling individual lot in JH Pierneef: IN/SIGHT was Acacia in the Veld , a 1940 winter bushveld scene that sold for R2.6 million. The overwhelming response of buyers to this single-artist sale saw even notionally entry-level items such as Pierneef’s linocuts and reference books achieve estimate-beating prices. Moderns Emerge as Custodians of Value 18