Provenance

Acquired from the artist by the current owner.

Literature

South African Tatler (1965) 'Private Viewing', 7(2), image 5, page 44, another cast illustrated.

Natal Daily News, 13 July 1967, another cast illustrated.

Art Look (1967) 'Apathy Under the Sun', 1(11), another cast illustrated on page 13.

Susanna Jansen van Rensburg (1970) Sydney Kumalo en ander bantoekunstenaars van Transvaal, MA Thesis, Art History Department, University of Pretoria, another cast illustrated on page 41, figure 94.

Elza Miles (2004) Polly Street: The Story of an Art Centre, Johannesburg: The Ampersand Foundation, another cast illustrated on page 86, figure 105.

Hayden Proud (2006) Revisions: Expanding the Narrative of South African Art, The Campbell Smith Collection, exhibition catalogue, SA History Online and UNISA Press, the brick clay model illustrated in colour on page 196, cat. no 168.

Gavin Watkins and Charles Skinner (2023) The Sculptures of Sydney Kumalo and Ezrom Legae, A Catalogue Raisonné, Johannesburg: Strauss & Co, another cast illustrated on page 72, 411, 412 and 630.

Exhibited

Opening of Egon Guenther's New Private Gallery, group exhibition, Linksfield, Johannesburg, 31 August 1965.

Egon Guenther Gallery, Johannesburg, Ezrom Legae, First Solo Exhibition, 22 August to 8 October 1966, possibly another cast exhibited.

South African National Gallery (1966), Johannesburg Civic Theatre (1966) and Durban Art Gallery (1967), South African Breweries Biennale Art Prize 1966, September 1966 to January 1967, possibly another cast from the edition exhibited, cat. no. 58.

Natal Society of Arts (NSA) Gallery, Durban, Ezrom Legae Solo Exhibition, 11 to 29 July 1967, possibly another cast from the edition exhibited.

South African Association of Arts, Johannesburg Art Gallery (October 1972), Port Elizabeth, Ann Bryant Art Gallery, East London, RSA Exhibition, Tentoonstelling, 21 November to 2 December 1972, possibly another cast from the edition exhibited, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue as cat. no. 2.

South African National Gallery, Cape Town, Revisions: Expanding the Narrative of South African Art, The Campbell Smith Collection, 1 October 2005 to 19 March 2006, the brick clay model exhibited.

Notes

The brick clay model, signed' Legae' is in the Homestead Collection, Cape Town.

This bronze reflects the importance of Ezrom Legae’s 1965 meeting with dealer Egon Guenther. An early champion of Legae’s work, Guenther underwrote the production of the artist’s first bronzes, including this lot – his second in bronze. Although marked “V/X”, only seven of the planned casts from an edition of ten were ever produced (edition numbers 1/10 - 7/10).¹ The work was first exhibited in a group show at Guenther’s new suburban gallery in Linksfield in 1965. However, Guenther’s influence extended beyond mere promotion.

He introduced Legae to his collection of traditional African art, much of it acquired at auctions in Europe. Decades later he recalled the decisive impact these encounters had on Legae.² Produced during a period of personal discovery and material experimentation – when Legae was part of Guenther’s stable of internationally recognised South African artists – this sculpture showcases key aspects of his early sculptural practice. Most notably, they involve his skilled simplification of forms and recurrent interest in heads.

The bipartite composition consists of two forms: a larger sphere balanced on a smaller columnar structure, together representing an upturned head. The motif of the face looking upwards is well established in western art, yet Legae’s treatment of the staple of Christian art is deliberately rudimentary. As art historian E J de Jager noted of Legae’s early sculptures, his faces “are similar in many respects to African masks, but in a generalised way.”³

This synthesis of influences underscores a key point: Legae’s work, noted critic Ivor Powell, exists “at a cusp between African sensibility and reference on one hand, and the transcendent and universalist preoccupations of international modernism on the other.”⁴ Legae would continue to make figures and heads into the early 1970s, producing totemic sculptures like Stargazer (1972), characterised by their “aspirational upward energy of the face”.⁶ This lot locates its very beginnings.

¹ Gavin Watkins and Charles Skinner (2023) The Sculptures of Sydney Kumalo and Ezrom Legae: A Catalogue Raisonné, Cape Town: Strauss & Co, page 411.

² Karel Nel (2000) 'The Egon Guenther Family Collection: A conversation with Karel Nel', in African Art from the Egon Guenther Family Collection, sale catalogue, New York: Sotheby’s, 18 November, pages 8-13.

³ E J De Jager (1978) 'Contemporary African sculpture in South Africa', in Fort Hare Papers, 6(6), September, page 441.
⁴ Ivor Powell (2006) 'Ezrom Legae', in Revisions, Cape Town: UNISA/ SAHO/ Iziko Museums, page 192.
⁵ Elizabeth Rankin (2018) 'Legae: A Retrospective', in Re/discovery and Memory: The Works of Kumalo, Legae, Nitegeka & Villa, Cape Town: Norval Foundation, page 190.