Notes

Number 3 from the edition of African Goat is in the collection of Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town.

Thanks to Barbara Buntman and Gavin Watkins for assistance with cataloguing this lot.

The animals depicted in Ezrom Leage’s work – typically horses, chickens, dogs or goats – are often metaphors for the pain and suffering experienced under the oppressive apartheid regime, and the violence and brutality of life in the townships at the time. In the Chicken series of drawings (1978), the torture and death in detention of Steve Biko, specifically, is referenced, whereas in Dying Beast, 1993, the animal’s suffering can be seen as referring to the plight of the people more broadly. Barbara Buntman, who interviewed Legae in 1984, recalls that goats, in contrast, had several references in his work: ‘he talked about Picasso’s goats, goats in townships and rural areas, and the role of goats in traditional rites’.¹ In the present lot, the form of the goat is less naturalistic than Picasso’s She Goat (1950), but equally comical. The stylisation and attenuation of limbs is reminiscent of the work of twentieth century modernist sculptors such as Lynn Chadwick and Alberto Giacometti, as well as of historical African sculpture and mask forms. African Goat was cast in 1990 at the Vignali Foundry in Pretoria (while Legae was represented by the Goodman Gallery) as an edition of 7, plus one artist’s proof, the present lot.

1. Barbara Buntman, pers. comm., 24 September 2019.

Provenance

Goodman Gallery.

Literature

James Webb and Josh Ginsburg (2016) Off the Wall: An 80^th Birthday Celebration with Linda Givon, Johannesburg: Wits Art Museum, catalogue. Illustrated on page 18.

Elizabeth Burroughs and Karel Nel (2018) Re/discovery and Memory: The Works of Kumalo. Legae, Nitegeka and Villa, Cape Town: Norval Foundation. Another cast from the edition illustrated on page 192 as fig.38.