Works by an elite grouping of South African modernist painters, among them Maggie Laubser, Erik Laubscher, Gerard Sekoto and Irma Stern, drew competitive bidding at Strauss & Co’s flagship Evening Sale in Cape Town on Tuesday, 15 September.
Held during a replenishing spring downpour, the sale attracted more than 300 bidders from 10 countries and earned R35 266 883 from 49 lots sold, representing a 77.50% value sell-through rate.
Most sought-after flower paintings
Four telephone bidders vied for Irma Stern’s celebrated 1935 still life Dahlias, which sold after 22 bids for R13 725 000.
Stern’s monumental dahlia paintings are among her most sought-after flower paintings. In 2019, Still Life with Fruit and Dahlias (1946) sold for R16 159 600 at a Strauss & Co sale in Johannesburg.
Stern’s star appeal at auction was further underscored by the sale of Cape Town Docks, a historically important marine landscape from 1957, for R3 202 500.
Unique place in history
Pre-sale interest in Maggie Laubser’s Portrait of a Woman with Headscarf Holding Flowers, a work with a distinguished provenance, carried through to the salesroom.
Eight bidders, five on the telephones and three online, placed 26 bids for the painting, which holds a unique place in recent history, appearing prominently in the background of former president F.W. de Klerk’s posthumous 2021 video apology for apartheid.
The portrait sold to a telephone bidder for R2 630 625, more than double the pre-sale high estimate.
“It was heartening to see such an enthusiastic response from collectors, some in the room, others on the telephones or connected via our online system, to the exceptional works in our Evening Sale,” says Bina Genovese, Executive Director of Strauss & Co Cape Town, who handled the sale of Stern’s Dahlias at the rostrum.
“You can never predict what will happen in the salesroom, so it was particularly gratifying to see strong bidding across a range of important artists, from Wolf Kibel and Erik Laubscher to Penny Siopis. The results we achieved for our clients reflect the enduring appeal and depth of South African painting.”
Still lifes
Erik Laubscher’s 1948 Still Life, an excellent example of his early School of Paris style, opened a session devoted to seven still lifes by Stern, Laubser, Frans Oerder and Stanley Pinker. Twelve bids from two rival online buyers saw Laubscher’s still life sell for R1 486 875.
Wolf Kibel’s undated Young Boy attracted online, room and telephone bidders, selling after 11 bids to a telephone bidder for R438 995.
Other noteworthy modernist paintings included Gerard Sekoto’s The Mother on the Road, circa 1945 to 1947, which sold for R1 715 625, and J.H. Pierneef’s undated Landscape with Riverbed, which realised R981 963.
While appetite for contemporary art remains uneven, reflecting global trends, painters Kate Gottgens, Georgina Gratrix and Penny Siopis achieved consistently solid results.
Competitive bids
The penultimate lot in the sale, Siopis’ 2011 diptych Swarm, a large-scale ink and glue abstraction, attracted competitive bids from two telephone bidders before being won by a late online bidder for R924 200.
An editioned 2004 poster by William Kentridge, created for the first South African screening of the complete 9 Drawings for Projection at Constitution Hill, sold for R462 100.
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Irma Stern, who was born on 2 October 1894 in Schweizer-Reneke, died on 23 August 1966 in Cape Town aged 71.
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