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, dated 25 October 1985 and numbered 2_31686 on the reverse; inscribed with the artist's name, the date and title on a Goodman Gallery label adhered to the reverse
Provenance
Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg.
The Linda Givon Collection.
Notes
Thanks to the Goodman Gallery team for assisting with the cataloguing of this lot.
"In an image from 1985, for instance, a teenager looks just past the frame that Goldblatt has placed around him. His arms form a second frame. They are encased in white plaster and clasped between his knees. In a formal reading of this composition, these arms draw our eyes around the image and back to the boy’s face, over and over. Though he looks calm, his face registers both alarm and exhaustion; urgency behind a veil of fear. In the years before apartheid was dismantled in 1994, and before Nelson Mandela ascended from being a political prisoner to the first black president of South Africa in the first election to allow black people the vote, violence was, of course, commonplace. Matjee’s plaster-cast arms are the result of a police arrest, during which he was dragged by his feet from his home, his arms dislocated in the process."1
1. Pippa Milne (2019) 'David Goldblatt Review', Vault, 24 (Nov 2018 – Jan 2019), online, https://vaultmagazine.com/ISS24/features/goldblatt_feature.php, accessed 16 January 2025.
Exhibited
The Jewish Museum, New York, South African Photographs, 2 May to 19 September 2010, another example exhibited.
The South African Jewish Museum, Cape Town, Kith, Kin and Khaya: South African Photographs, 31 October 2010 to 11 February 2011, another example exhibited.
Standard Bank Gallery and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, David Goldblatt:The Pursuit of Values, 21 October to 5 December 2015.
Centre Pompidou, Paris, David Goldblatt Retrospective Exhibition, 21 February to 13 May 2018, another example exhibited.
Literature
Goodman Gallery (2010) David Goldblatt: Kith Kin and Khay—South African Photographs, exhibition catalogue, Cape Town: Goodman Editions, another example illustrated on page 179.
The Standard Bank of South Africa and The Goodman Gallery (2015) David Goldblatt: The Pursuit of Values, exhibition catalogue, Johannesburg: The Standard Bank of South Africa and The Goodman Gallery, another example illustrated on page 91.
Jonathan Cane (2015) Aperture Archive, David Goldblatt Interview with Jonathan Cane, online, https://archive.aperture.org/article/2015/3/3/david-goldblatt, accessed 22 January 2025, another example illustrated.
Centre Pompidou (2018) David Goldblatt, exhibition catalogue, Paris: Centre Pompidou, another example illustrated on page 26.
Other lots that might interest you
