Important South African and International Art, Decorative Arts & Jewellery

Live Auction, 15 October 2018

Art: Evening Session

Sold for

ZAR 512 100
Lot 613
  • Robert Hodgins; Girls in the Grass


Lot Estimate
ZAR 400 000 - 600 000
Selling Price
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
ZAR 512 100

About this Item

South African 1920-2010
Girls in the Grass

signed, dated 2000, inscribed with the title and 'released by me 27/5/07' on the reverse

oil on canvas
90 by 120cm excluding frame

Notes

Whether fully described or roughly delineated in a few brushstrokes, Robert Hodgins’ idiosyncratic treatment of the human figure was functionally rooted in the expressionist tradition. An assiduous student of western modernism, Hodgins drew inspiration from the scathing caricatures of George Grosz, fraught figuration of Francis Bacon, and sardonic optimism and exuberant colouration of Philip Guston. The present lot, made after a trip to the Transkei, hints at the painter’s familiarity with Otto Müller, a first-generation German expressionist known for his many lyrical studies of female nudes and bathers. Hodgins, a gay man, rarely produced female nudes. His elementary description of the three female figures and bold colour palette functionally deracialise his subjects and mitigates the latent exoticism. The lot typifies his painterly mission to reconcile “the abstract and expressive life of the paint” with “the volatile suggestion of representation,”1 without forsaking the agency of the other.

  1. Ivor Powell (1996). Robert Hodgins, Johannesburg: Robert Hodgins, page 6.

View all Robert Hodgins lots for sale in this auction