Notes

A highly significant drawing by Walter Battiss comes under the hammer on the first Strauss & Co Online auction of 2021, which runs from 15 to 22 February. It depicts a very cheerful Battiss looking on as the famous Picasso signs one of his own prints from the bull reduction series as a gift to Battiss when the two met in Picasso’s studio in Paris on 23 June 1949. Battiss, the great showman, told various versions of the story, and it has become something of an urban legend. As Murray Schoonraad,¹ Warren Siebrits² and Giles Battiss tell the story, quoting the artist himself, Battiss visited Paris in 1949 en route to Turin. As the founder of the International Art Club of South Africa, he was travelling to Italy with the local contribution of South African art destined for the International Art Club exhibition. Battiss had always been a huge admirer of Picasso’s and placed him at the top of the list of artists to be studied by his students at Pretoria Boys High School, where Battiss taught for nearly three decades before accepting the Chair of Fine Arts at Unisa. Battiss had great difficulty getting an audience with Picasso: he approached Picasso’s dealer in Paris, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, and left a copy of The Artists of the Rocks (1948), the new book he had just published under his own imprint, The Red Fawn Press. Dropping in a couple of days later at Kahnweiler’s gallery, the dealer obligingly escorted Battiss to Picasso’s studio. Picasso reciprocated in kind by giving Battiss one of his own lithographic prints, Bull X. It is a well-known fact that Picasso only signed works once they were sold, and so this was a great honour for Battiss to receive such a generous gift, inscribed with a personal dedication from the famous artist. Picasso purportedly asked him: “Tell me now, Battiss, am I as good as your Bushman artists?”

One of Battiss's close friends, Johan Kritzinger remembers hearing Battiss tell the story differently.³ In this version, Battiss pitched up at Picasso's home in Paris unheralded. The great man's secretary, Sabartés, guarded his privacy closely and turned away all but the especially invited visitors. But Battiss handed over the gift he had brought – a long double string of dolosse tied together.⁴ Battiss explained the function of the dolosse and Sabartés closed the door and went to confer with Picasso. It did the trick, and Battiss was ushered in and the two artists spent a wonderful day together.

Battiss took this personal experience of Picasso’s art and his working methods to heart and the elongated bushman-like figures became a standard motif in his art after that meeting. The drawing on the Strauss & Co February Online auction is characterised by Battiss’s keen sense of observation and reliable memory: many years later he would correct authors when they described what Picasso’s studio looked like at the time incorrectly. The Picasso print of the bull was a prized possession of Battiss’s, only being auctioned in 2016, for R500 000.

1. Murray Schoonraad (1976) Walter Battiss, Cape Town: The South African Library, page 16.
2. Warren Siebrits (2016) Walter Battiss: I Invented Myself: The Jack M Ginsberg Collection, Johannesburg: The Ampersand Foundation, pages 31 to 33.
3. Johan Kritzinger (2021) Personal email communication to Wilhelm van Rensburg, 15 February.
4. Dolosse are sheep or goat knuckle bones used by South African traditional healers as divination pieces and, historically, by rural children as toy oxen.

Literature

Murray Schoonraad (1976) Walter Battiss, Cape Town: The South African Library, the story of the meeting between the two artists is told on page 16.

Murray Schoonraad and Pieter Duminy (1981) Battiss 75, Pietermaritzburg: D&S Publishers, the present lot is illustrated in black and white on page 18.

Warren Siebrits (2016) Walter Battiss: I Invented Myself: The Jack M Ginsberg Collection, Johannesburg: The Ampersand Foundation, Picasso's gift to Battiss is illustrated in colour on page 33.