The Oliver Powell and Timely Investments Trust Collection

Live Virtual Auction, 20 September 2022

The Oliver Powell and Timely Investments Trust Collection
About the Session

Strauss & Co is pleased to present this extraordinary collection as the featured session this September Live Virtual Auction. An established insolvency practitioner with a passion for the arts, Oliver Powell's principal focus has been collecting South African painting, sculpture and works on paper made since 1950. Colour, graphic ingenuity and emotional weight are all attributes in an artwork that Powell is drawn to. Powell also emphasises the importance of his many encounters with artists. “There is so much value in meeting an artist,” says Powell. “Aspects and details of their life are reflected in what and how they paint.”


Sold for

ZAR 23 450
Lot 55
  • Fred Schimmel; Figures
  • Fred Schimmel; Figures
  • Fred Schimmel; Figures


Lot Estimate
ZAR 20 000 - 30 000
Selling Price
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
ZAR 23 450

About this Item

South African 1928-2009
Figures

signed and dated 74

acrylic on board
57 by 42cm excluding frame; 70 by 55 by 4cm including frame

Notes

During the 70s Schimmel produced a substantial body of figurative paintings in acrylic. “Rather than the grid-like, organisational line of the serigraph landscapes, these paintings employ the same enveloping line found in the Hard-Edge landscapes from the sixties. The bodies and faces of the characters in these paintings are, like the elliptical caverns in the prints, often described in rolling contours that overlap and intersect. Several portraits, in which faces and features have been cut through and distorted by sharp lines scraped into the picture’s surface, have the qualities of blind contour drawings. It is as though the artist has drawn his figures without regard for the sanctity of faces, features and bodily proportions, in fact, some figures have been morphed into plant-like organisms.”1

1. Marelize van Zyl (ed) (2008) Fred Schimmel: Retrospective, Stellenbosch: SMAC Art Publishing, page 36.

Provenance

In-Fin-Art Gallery, Cape Town, 4 November 2007.

The Oliver Powell and Timely Investments Trust Collection.

Exhibited

SMAC Art Gallery, Stellenbosch, Fred Schimmel at 80, 27 November 2008 to 25 January 2009.

Literature

Marelize van Zyl (ed) (2008) Fred Schimmel: Retrospective, Stellenbosch: SMAC Art Publishing, illustrated on page 69.

View all Fred Schimmel lots for sale in this auction