Notes

Proceeds from the sale of this lot will benefit the Cape Peninsula Organisation for the Aged to support their extensive welfare retirement commitment for State pensioners in need.

'Each flower in Flowers and Fruit of 1937 is subtly different. Irma loved to fill her house with large bunches of the flowers that she grew in her garden herself. When she was painting in Johannesburg, it was Freda Feldman who drove to the market to buy large bunches of exotic flowers. "My mother shopped for perfect Cezanne-like fruits and unusual vegetables that seemed cultivated especially for the luscious still-lifes Irma would set up."..."No sooner had Irma painted them, which she did at considerable speed - than she would devour them. Eating her still-lifes was a favourite pastime!" remembers Mona Berman.

In the still-life, Flowers and Fruit, of 1937, Irma Stern goes far beyond creating pictorial space by organising the forms of different objects in relation to one another. First her powerful colours evoke our senses and then she manipulates our perception of pictorial space by playing off the intensity of one colour against another. The bright turquoise of the vase is equal in intensity to the bold orange of the heavy pumpkin, but the evocation of its solid form and mass in a subtle gradation of oranges, reds and browns convinces us that it must be deeper in space, and therefore behind the vase. Irma Stern judges exactly the point at which intense colours are saturated and then balances these against subtly muted areas of colour. Her chromatic range creates a sense of life and meaning in the painting.' (Smuts, page 26)

Provenance

Donated to The Cape Peninsula Organisation for the Aged

Literature

Marion Arnold. (1995) Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye, Cape Town: Fernwood Press for the Rembrandt van Rijn Art Foundation. Illustrated in colour on page 64.

Wilhelm van Rensburg (ed)(2003) Irma Stern: Expressions of a Journey. Johannesburg: Standard Bank Gallery. Illustrated in colour on page 171.

Helene Smuts (2003) Reflections of a Journey: an educational resource to accompany Irma Stern: Expressions of a Journey. Johannesburg: Standard Bank Gallery. Illustrated in colour on page 26.