Notes

Although born in Dresden, Adolph Jentsch became the most iconic, evocative and beloved painter of the Namibian landscape. He came from a religious and cultured background and studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts in the company of George Grosz, Max Pechstein, and Kurt Schwitters. His work could not have been more different from theirs, however, as his natural inclination was towards a more meditative, traditional approach. Opposed to the growing National Socialism in Germany, Jentsch visited a friend in the then South West Africa in 1938 and never returned to live in his place of birth.

Jentsch devoted the rest of his career to painting the vast open spaces, endless horizons, still heat, and blazing light of his adopted surroundings. He was profoundly influenced by oriental philosophies, particularly Taoism, and embraced the harmony and serenity of the contemplation of nature and painting en plein air. He produced a mystic and meditative body of work, most notably calligraphic, flickering watercolours in a subdued colour palette. Large-scale oil paintings by Jentsch are rare: the artist preferred to keep them in his own collection, and it is one of the region’s greatest cultural tragedies that the majority were lost when the barn they were stored in was destroyed by fire in 1975.