Notes

Cecil Skotnes’ paternal ancestry was Norwegian, yet it was his mother’s homeland of Canada, and the towering sculpture of the indigenous people of the Northwest Coast, along with the Haida mortuary posts, that first sparked his interest in totem poles. Carved and often painted, these totem poles commemorated families, histories, ancestral beings, and marked graves. While they were never objects that directly inspired his own work, they alerted him to the totems of Africa and his bookshelves included volumes that illustrated the funerary posts of Madagascar and the carved house posts of the Bangwa of Uganda and the Dogon of Mali. In the late 1960s Vittorino Meneghelli launched his shop and gallery, Totem Meneghelli, bringing art to Johannesburg from his travels in West Africa. Skotnes produced a whole collection of multi-sided painted totems as a contemporary reflection on African art. Since then, he used the form to create small and large freestanding works, at times embellished, using the sides to signify a changing view: in this case, perhaps, the shift of seasons or the colours that characterize both the arctic regions and the tropics.

–— Pippa Skotnes, 2022

Provenance

Johans Borman Fine Art, September 2009.

The Oliver Powell and Timely Investments Trust Collection.