Notes

Also exhibited as 'The Eggs (Hommage à Bosch).'

Still Life with Eggs was exhibited in October 1948 at Preller’s dramatic home, Ygdrasil, which was designed by the celebrated architect, Norman Eaton and completed in the mid-forties. With its cool interior, pared of any clutter, few situations could have been more sympathetic to showing Preller’s works and we can only imagine its elegance and appeal there.

Like many of his post-war works, the transience of life is its primary theme. During the Second World War Preller had served in the Field Ambulance Corps in North Africa and his subsequent internment as a prisoner of war in Italy had exposed him to experiences that were to preoccupy him and find expression in his paintings. Focusing on the cycles of birth, life and death, objects take on symbolic significance: the flickering candle suggests the fragility of life which can so easily be extinguished; the eggs symbolise embryonic life and creativity; and the knife hints at personal suffering, division and cessation.

These tribulations are echoed in the disturbing detail from Hieronymous Bosch’s compendium of the torments of Hell which Preller places in relation to his still life in order to facilitate a dialogue between the physical and the metaphysical that resonates across the centuries.

Literature

Esmé Berman and Karel Nel, A Visual Biography Alexis Preller: Collected Images, Johannesburg, 2009, pages 64-67, illustrated.

Esmé Berman and Karel Nel, A Visual Biography Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows, Johannesburg, 2009, page 119, illustrated.