Notes

Two other known versions, each entitled Flower King, were painted in 1968 and included in Alexis Preller’s solo exhibition curated by Esmé Berman for the Pretoia Museum in 1972 (catalogue numbers 144 and 145). Common to all three is the head of a young man, crowned with an elaborate headdress of organic forms deriving as much from plant life as they might from sea coral. Their beautiful faces and aquiline features are preoccupied by pensive expressions and each has a small symbol on one cheek that evokes a scarification mark or a tear. In one of the earlier paintings a barbed thread across the youth’s forehead suggests the sufferings of Christ.

An earlier prototype, Christ Head, 1952, in the Permanent Collection of Iziko South African National Gallery, is described by Esmé Berman as ‘more specifically African and more majestic than any of his earlier conceptions’.^[i] She goes on to explain that ‘the idea embodied was less that of a hallowed Christian icon than of a mighty African ancestral figure’.

The Flower King, produced almost two decades later, resonates with the artist’s youthful admiration of Post-Impressionist artists such as Paul Gauguin and the clarity of form, purity of colour and hieratic qualities of Piero della Francesca Quattrocento frescoes.

[i] Esmé Berman and Karel Nel, Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows, Shelf Publishing, 2009, p151.

Literature

cf. Esme Berman, Alexis Preller Retrospective Exhibition Catalogue, October 1972, Pretoria Art Museum, catalogue numbers 144 and 145