Notes

Many of the most desirable and critically acclaimed paintings of Boonzaier’s output were produced against the rich textural backdrop of Cape Town’s oldest suburbs, including the historic Bo Kaap and District Six. These paintings, animated by pedestrians, give us a glimpse of life in these vibrant multi-cultural communities before forced removals of residents and demolition of buildings by the apartheid regime.

One of Boonzaier’s earliest stylistic influences was Pieter Wenning, an artist whose paintings of Cape architectural heritage instilled in Gregoire an appreciation of eighteenth and nineteenth century buildings at the Cape. Wenning painted there on his first, brief, visit in 1916, and the young Gregoire would have been familiar with these works from Wenning’s visits to the Boonzaier home and subsequent exhibitions which informed and inspired the younger artist’s early development.

In 1935, Boonzaier went to England to study art, first at the Heatherley School of Art in the company of Freida Lock and Terence McCaw and later at the Central School of Art. During this time, he went on painting excursions to Cornwall and in 1936 he visited Spain.

The present lot, painted in 1938 after his return from Europe and at the time of the formation of the New Group, marks in Boonzaier a new visual vocabulary informed by exposure to the work of the post-impressionists, whose work he encountered on his travels. In this work, the artist employs a looser painterly style with fresh, vibrant colours inspired by the Mediterranean light he had experienced before his return to South Africa.

This view, looking down Wale Street from the Bo-Kaap, shows George's Cathedral in the background.

Provenance

Mark McNulty.