Notes

The cow, depicted in this work, is one of four animals frequently appearing in Joachim Schönfeldt’s early works, the others being the peahen, the lioness, and the eagle. They are female counterparts of the animals that represent the four evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in Christian iconography. They stand as icons of what the artist calls a possible ‘pan-African religion’. The painted inscription on the inside rim of the suspended dome construction of Saw (Adaye) reads:

The true merchants of Venice

I salute the hawkers

(Come and see, come and buy)

Saints, Martyrs

Brothers, Africa

After graduating with a degree in Fine Arts and working as a teacher for a few years, Schönfeldt took up a position as Researcher and Curator of Old African Art at Meneghelli Holdings in Johannesburg. He acknowledges that this experience deepened his interest in and knowledge of the many traditions of African art and folklore. It also steered him towards wood as a primary medium. Schönfeldt is a talented sculptor, working predominantly in bluegum and sometimes jacaranda.

After spending 1989 living and working in Italy, Schönfeldt returned to Johannesburg and embarked on a series of monumental sculptures. His highly individual approach to the function and display of wooden sculpture was unprecedented in South Africa at the time. He built large-scale plywood constructions, which he suspended above intricately hand carved and painted sculptures below. Four of these installation pieces were exhibited at a brilliant exhibition in the long defunct Newtown Galleries in 1992, and later in the year an exhibition of work on a more domestic scale was held at the Radium Beer Hall in Orange Grove.

The Johannesburg Art Gallery bought a key work from the Newtown Galleries exhibition, Latte per Tutti (Milk for Everyone). The suspended plywood construction of that work suggests four giant teats of an udder, providing milk to four expertly-carved wooden animals – a lioness, a cow, a peahen and a hawk – on stools below.

In June 1993, the present lot Saw (Adaye) (Adaye meaning ‘realization’), another of the monumental sculptures exhibited at Newtown Galleries, was shown at the 45th Venice Biennale. South Africa’s inclusion in the event was an important cultural moment after a 25-year ban due to the international condemnation of apartheid. When Saw (Adaye) returned from

Venice, Schönfeldt and Kendell Geers held the first of two joint exhibitions, titled The New Patron, at the recently opened Everard Read Contemporary in Rosebank, Johannesburg. This was the first South African commercial art gallery dedicated exclusively to South African contemporary art, and it represented the work of other young and emerging artists at the time, including Jane Alexander, Belinda Blignaut, Willem Boshoff, Steven Cohen and Simon Stone.

I worked for Trent Read at Everard Read Contemporary from 1992 to 1994. Having cut my teeth in the art auction sector, it was my first experience of selling contemporary art. Although the market for contemporary art was almost non-existent, it was an exciting time, and during those short two years that Everard Read Contemporary remained open, I cannot remember a single artwork (bar Willem Boshoff’s 90-piece carved prototype of Blind Alphabet, exhibited in February 1994) attracting more attention and admiration than Schönfeldt’s Saw (Adaye).This particular sculpture remains a masterpiece of contemporary art to my mind, having been made during a seminal social, political and cultural period of transformation in South Africa’s history. Near the end of The New Patron exhibition, a prominent collector of contemporary art purchased Saw (Adaye) for an amount that set a record for a contemporary South African artwork at the time.

I had the privilege of exhibiting Saw (Adaye) again fifteen years later in my own gallery in Johannesburg and also in 2009 on my booth at the 2nd Joburg Art Fair. This time the work was displayed to much greater effect, and to large public interest, in conjunction with four classical musicians playing a cacophonous composition by Johannesburg composer James French on tubas and horns. Feeling something like the ‘Walls of Jericho’, the drywall partitions separating gallery spaces shook and reverberated. I was certain that a noise complaint was imminent, but my neighbouring exhibitors said nothing and endured the sonic barrage in the name of art. It was a lovely and fitting way to bring my gallery to a close after seven years.

Warren Siebrits

Photographs by Bob Cnoops, with thanks to Warren Siebrits Modern & Contemporary Art, Johannesburg, for permission to use the image.

Provenance

Corporate collection, Johannesburg.

Private collection, Welgevonden Private Game Lodge.

Private collection, Johannesburg.

Exhibited

The Newtown Galleries, Johannesburg, Other Visibilities, March 1992.

45th Venice Biennale, Incroci del Sud: Affinities, Palazzo Giustinian Lolin, Venice, and Sala 1, Rome, June to December 1993.

Everard Read Contemporary, Johannesburg, The New Patron (joint exhibition with Kendell Geers), September 1993.

Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art, Johannesburg, November to December 2008.

Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art, 2^nd Joburg Art Fair, February 2009.

Literature

South African Embassy, Rome (1993) Incroci del Sud: Affinities, exhibition catalogue, Rome: South African Embassy, illustrated in colour on page 55.

Jean-Yves Joannais (1994) Un Art Contemporain d'Afrique de Sud, Paris: Editions Plume, illustrated on page 81.

Warren Siebrits (2009) 2^nd Joburg Art Fair, exhibition catalogue, Johannesburg: Warren Siebrits Modern and Contemporary Art.