Perspectives on Africa
Live Virtual Auction, 17 February 2025
Perspectives on Africa
About the SessionStrauss & Co is pleased to present Perspectives on Africa, a sale that explores the complexity, beauty, and fluidity of perspectives through African art and works by artists with strong ties to the continent. The sale coalesces the rich and varied connections between Africa and its artistic expressions, presenting works that span figuration, landscape, and abstraction, inviting collectors to engage with powerful narratives emerging from Africa's evolving perspectives. The works reflect layered meanings, both as a method of representing depth and dimension as a way of framing our understanding of the world. Work by Contemporary artists reflects on the historical foundations of Modernist artists, exploring themes such as identity, belonging, urbanisation, and re-encounters with tradition, while the sale transitions to Modernist interpretations of Africa, exploring the complexity of colonial encounters, post-independence aspirations, and indigenous practices. Building on Strauss & Co’s commitment to developing a strong local photography market, the sale includes an artist focus on the work of social documentarian Paul Alberts, whose images captured poignant narratives of everyday life, particularly in Cape Town. These works sit alongside David Goldblatt and Zanele Muholi, whose visceral images explore themes of identity, social justice and the multifaceted realities of African life.
About this Item
signed and inscribed 'Java'
Notes
“Tretchikoff firmly believes that a flower is a living organism, subject to pain in the same way as an animal or human. Indeed, modern science has discovered that a cry of pain is uttered by the flower when it is cut. This is the theme of the picture, which is far more than merely an excellent example of the artist’s skill in composition and capable draughtsmanship.”1
This intensely captivating hyper-realistic painting uncompromisingly captures the excruciating pain of a violent act as a metaphor for great loss. The present lot is a work of startling contrasts with depictions of both great beauty and deep sorrow. In the foreground, we are confronted by the brutal severing with a steel knife of one of the stems of the symbolically loaded pair of St Joseph’s lilies, spilling a chilling drop of blood on a draped crisp white sheet. Tretchikoff stages this scene on what appears to be a wooden table beyond which a thriving plant with luscious foliage stands in stark contrast to the darkening evening sky creating a further sense of longing.
1. Richard Buncher (1950) Tretchikoff, Cape Town: Howard Timmins, unpaginated.
Literature
Richard Buncher (1950) Tretchikoff, Cape Town: Howard Timmins, illustrated in black and white, unpaginated.