Notes

The artist's preliminary sketch notes and a newspaper clipping accompany the lot.

This is the artist's personal, annotated, proof copy of Nesos. The book of 54 screen-printed images and poems was produced by Walter Battiss over eight months after five visits to the Greek islands between 1966 and 1968. The hand-written colophon reads: 'Nesos is the Greek word for island. The contents of this book are images from sixteen Greek islands that I knew. All the serigraphs have been made by me and no printer has touched the pages. There are a few odd proofs and only 25 numbered copies.' Walter Battiss, Athens, 1968

According to Murray Schoonraad, Battiss ‘had been using silkscreen as art medium for some 15 years prior to this date but now he began to master the technique of a great artist. Because of his love for colour and kinetic forms, he was particularly attracted to this graphic medium … He rebelled against the machine age and, probably as a tribute to the unsophisticated life he encountered on the Greek islands, he decided to produce a handmade book ... Even the text was handcut and hand printed by Battiss. Many of the pages are technically experimental in order to obtain particular effects. The pages are evidence of a tremendous joie de vivre. They are gay and colourful, full of spontaneous use of colour and form. This is truly an ode to beauty – a poem in colour'.¹

Warren Siebrits, who organised the Battiss exhibition at the Wits Art Museum in 2016, is of the opinion that 'there are no other silkscreens from the hundreds made by Battiss over the years that come close to the technical and visual sophistication of the exquisite images in Nesos, which are testament to the sheer pleasure the artist felt when visiting Greece'.²

1. Murray Schoonraad (1976) Walter Battiss, Cape Town: Struik, page 20.
2. Warren Siebrits (2016) Walter Battiss: ‘I Invented Myself’ (The Jack M Ginsberg Collection), Johannesburg: The Ampersand Foundation, page 80.

Provenance

The Walter Battiss Estate.

Exhibited

Wits Art Museum, Johannesburg, Walter Battiss: I Invented Myself (The Jack M Ginsberg Collection), 6 July to 9 October 2016. A de-bound copy of the book was exhibited.

Literature

Warren Siebrits (ed.) (2016) Walter Battiss: I Invented Myself (The Jack M Ginsberg Collection), Johannesburg: The Ampersand Foundation, another book from the edition illustrated in colour on pages 87 to 93.