Notes

This lot quotes Larry Scully’s most famous painting, The Madonna and Child of Soweto (1973), installed in the Regina Mundi Cathedral in Rockville, Soweto. In 1973, Johannesburg’s The Star newspaper commissioned Scully to produce a work to raise money for an education fund. Scully, who came to prominence in the 1960s, was well known for his large-scale panel paintings, notably a series installed in the foyer of Dudley Heights, Hillbrow. The large religious painting he delivered depicted both Mary and Jesus as black floating above an eye. It was acquired by businessman Harry Oppenheimer and donated to the cathedral. Scully’s inculturated black Madonna and child from his Soweto painting forms the central subject of this later work. Produced during a troubled year in Soweto’s history, this lot sees Scully integrate the figures into a spacious field of radiating colours and spontaneous brushwork typical of Scully’s lyrical abstractions.

Provenance

A gift from the artist to the current owner.

Literature

Michelle Wolff (2018) 'Madonna and Child of Soweto: Black Life Beyond Apartheid and Democracy' in Political Theology: 19(118): pages 1 - 21, referenced in the text and illustrated throughout.