Notes

A series of disembodied heads populate Preller’s oeuvre, from the early urn heads and African ‘gateway’ profiles that draw on his experiences in the Congo and engagements with the Ndebele community near Pretoria, through the dynasties of kings and princes that resonate with Greek and Egyptian mythology, to the Florentine statesmen, young bucks and men of letters in their characteristic red caps.

The present lot, O Poliziano, is a stylised portrait of Agnolo (Angelo) Ambrogini (1454–1494), a Florentine Renaissance scholar and Humanist poet. His nickname ‘Poliziano’ (the Politician), was derived from the Latin name of his birthplace, Montepulciano (Mons Politianus) rather than from any ambitions of his own. This late-career work, dating from 1975, harks back to Preller’s visit to Italy in 1953 when he studied the Quattrocento murals in Florence and Arezzo in detail, in preparation for his own first mural commission for the Receiver of Revenue building in Johannesburg. Preller seems to have based this portrait on one of the few known images of Poliziano, in a fresco by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the Tornabuoni Chapel of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence. Painted between 1485 and 1490, so during the poet’s lifetime, Ghirlandaio depicted the poet third from the left in a group of men in the bottom left corner of the scene.

Preller’s Poliziano has the same dark brows, hooded brown eyes, sculptural nose and finely delineated lips as Ghirlandaio’s, but instead of the fleshy naturalism and robust good health of the Renaissance image, Preller’s seems to be made of wood, with cracks and fissures running down his cheeks and neck. A wash of the artist’s characteristic cerulean blue descends behind the head, flattening the space and making this appear to be an ancient illuminated parchment. Inscrutable motifs from earlier in the artist’s work reoccur – the pharaonic beard, butterfly ear and floating egg-shapes – as do the spikes, dots and flourishes that Preller describes as ‘directional arrows’ leading the viewer’s eye and animating the surface of the canvas.

Provenance

Estate Late Danie de Jager (Sculptor).

Exhibited

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Alexis Preller, 12 to 29 November 1975, cat. no. 2

Literature

Goodman Gallery (1975) Alexis Preller, Johannesburg: Goodman Gallery, illustrated in colour on the cover of the exhibition catalogue.

Deichmann (1986) Die Werk van Alexis Preller 1934-1948 en 'n Catalogue Raisonné, unpublished master's dissertation University of Pretoria, cat. no. 830.

Esme Berman and Karel Nel (2009) Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows, Saxonwold: Shelf Publishing, illustrated in colour and mentioned in text on page 321.