Notes

In 2014, Deborah Bell produced three Annunciation dry point etchings, one of which the present lot is based upon. For her, this series is about personal transformation and contains a few of her recurrent motifs – the lion, angel, and red shoe. In earlier works, the lion represented a vulnerable and wounded self but here it is a strong and “more fully actualised self.”1 In the present lot, the angel does not loom in the doorway (as in Witness: Midbrain, lot 14) but has stepped over the threshold, beckoning the woman towards transformation. Bell explains “[…] the red shoes stand for the corporeal, physical life, and that the woman at times looks boldly back at the viewer uncertain as to whether she is ready to make the transition through the doorway or not”.² Bell admits that at the time she thought the theme of Annunciation was new ground for her, but was reminded by a family friend that a 1995 work with the same title is in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C.

^1. https://davidkrutprojects.com/33338/indiscussion-with-deborah-bell
^2. Deborah Bell (2015) Deborah Bell: Dreams of Immortality, Johannesburg: Everard Read, page 60.

Provenance

Everard Read Gallery, Cape Town, 4 March 2015.

The Oliver Powell and Timely Investments Trust Collection.

Exhibited

Everard Read, Deborah Bell: Dreams of Immortality, 7 May to 27 June 2015, Johannesburg and 14 May to 7 June, Cape Town, illustrated on page 61 of exhibition catalogue.