South African and International Fine and Decorative Arts

Online-Only Auction, 7 - 23 April 2014

South African and International Art
  • Paul Stopforth; Hand, from the Steve Biko series
  • Paul Stopforth; Hand, from the Steve Biko series
  • Paul Stopforth; Hand, from the Steve Biko series
  • Paul Stopforth; Hand, from the Steve Biko series
  • Paul Stopforth; Hand, from the Steve Biko series


Lot Estimate
ZAR 18 000 - 24 000

About this Item

South African 1945-
Hand, from the Steve Biko series
mixed media on paper
54,5 by 45cm excluding frame; 79 by 59 by 2cm including frame

Notes

Stopforth is especially noted for an important series of drawings based on the death of the Black Consciousness leader Steve Biko. The drawings remain an enduring testimony to the overt and covert legacies of apartheid-era interrogation and torture, and to the innumerable deaths in detention and through assassination that so characterized the Apartheid regime.1

All the drawings are done in a mixture of graphite and acrylic. Stopforth describes them as "an attempt to place [the series] in the context of Western art history - a South African 'saint', martyr and hero." 

1 http://www.schoolhouseprovincetown.com/stopforth/stopforth.html

2 http://library.thinkquest.org/18799/time6.html

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