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Strauss & Co to host a comprehensive single-artist auction of works by Irma Stern

20 May 2022

Titled Irma Stern: Time | Line, this boutique sale of 140 works from the Irma Stern Trust Collection and other private properties will feature rare paintings, drawings, prints, books and a stoneware piece that collectively span the entirety of Stern’s prolific and distinguished career.

The bulk of the works in Irma Stern: Time | Line are derived from the Irma Stern Trust Collection. To commemorate 56 years since inception of the Irma Stern Trust, Nedgroup Trust (Pty) Ltd, Trustees of the Irma Stern Trust, have released 124 artworks from its Collection, many of which have never been exhibited before. The benefit of this sale will be to strengthen the Collection for the future by preserving the Collection and making it accessible by developing the existing Irma Stern Trust website into an important research resource. In doing so, the trustees bring Irma Stern’s aim of promoting fine arts within and outside South Africa to fruition, as is stipulated in the artist’s final will and testament.

(A detailed explanation of the Trust’s formation and mandate appears in the print catalogue and e-catalogue for Irma Stern: Time | Line, and is also available on request.)

The contents of Irma Stern: Time | Line will be presented chronologically and opens with seven lithographs from the artist’s print portfolio Visionen (Visions), published in 1920 by the Berlin-based Hesperiden Verlag. The sale features works made in every decade from 1920 until the artist’s death in 1966, with many of her major themes covered, notably portraiture, travel pictures, nudes, religious subjects and marine scenes.

Irma Stern: Time | Line includes a strong selection of female subjects representing various ages, ethnicities and races. Strauss & Co is privileged to be offering a number of major oils depicting singular and powerful women. They include Stern’s 1929 portrait of charismatic Capetonian Roza van Gelderen (1890–1976), a life-long friend of the artist and important model (estimate R4 – 6 million), and Psychic: An Old Malay Woman (estimate R7 – 9 million), a portrait of Cape Muslim sitter made in 1941 that is notable for its lavish use of pink.

Notwithstanding her decades-long reputation as the most expensive South African artist at auction, the range of works released by the Trust will cater to a broad spectrum of collectors. The sale includes a number of etchings and drawings of female subjects from the 1950s with estimates starting at R10 000. The sale also includes a selection of Stern works drawn from private collections, among them an outstanding terracotta vase in a female form from 1951 (estimate R40 000 – 60 000) from the Shill Collection.

Irma Stern: Time | Line is supported by a detailed print catalogue (also available to download at www.straussart.co.za), exhibition and education programme. The public is invited to view works from Irma Stern: Time | Line at a special preview exhibition at Welgemeend Manor House (2–8 June 2022). Dr Kathy Wheeler, curator of the Irma Stern Trust Collection, will be in conversation with Strauss & Co senior art specialist Matthew Partridge on Saturday, 4 June at 10am at the exhibition venue. The talk will be followed by a walkabout with Strauss & Co specialists at 11 am. The auction starts at 6pm promptly on Wednesday, 8 June 2022 and will be run as a live virtual auction.