Notes

Although best known for his Overberg and Swartland scenes, Erik Laubscher also painted in southern Namibia from the mid to late 1980s. Like Georgia O'Keefe in New Mexico, Laubscher's Namibian paintings balance factual description with mythical statement. They include well-known geographical sites, like the Fish River Canyon, and studies of unspecified locations in the extremely dry Karas Region. Rain comes to Namibia with tropical easterly winds. Although prone to drought, Namibia did not officially experience drought in 1989, when this lot was painted - the country experienced its worst drought since the 1930s only in 1991.¹

This hard data would have annoyed Laubscher, who was neither a meteorologist nor a statistician. His landscape paintings, a constant of his career from the 1960s until his death in 2013, offer statements of sublime encounter. "His paintings become the poetic language of his emotions," notes critic Amanda Botha. "He transforms lines, shapes, colours and textures to unify them into ordered structures. In this way he identifies with the emotional force of the landscape in order to capture his experience of it in an image. The final result is a celebration of the magnitude and expansiveness of the land."²

Unlike his depthless abstract landscapes from the 1960s, this lot registers abundant perspective. His wispy clouds, while perfunctory, underscore a sense of receding endlessness. The unusual rock formations speak of the immense forces that shaped the brittle and deformed landscape. Laubscher, though, is not a surveyor; instead, he renders Namibia's geological formations as colossal jewel-like treasures. "The painting has to evoke the monumental feeling that really does exist in Africa," Laubscher said in 2009.³ He was reiterating a long-held belief. In 1967, remarking on the difference between European and African landscapes, he said: "We are engulfed in light, very much aware of space and the continuity of the land, which extends beyond our vision … The artist must have a definite oneness with this magnitude."⁴

1. Namibia Review (1993), Vol. 2, Windhoek, Directorate of Production and Publicity, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, p.11.
2. Amanda Botha. (2004) Foreword to catalogue: Erik Laubscher, Jacobus Kloppers and Walter Meyer. Cape Town: Johans Borman Fine Art Gallery. Available www.johansborman.co.za
3. Hans Fransen. (2009) Erik Laubscher: A Life in Art. Stellenbosch: SMAC, page 265
4. Stephen Gray. (1970) 'Erik Laubscher and Landscape', in Lantern, March, Vol. XIX, No.3, page 14.

Literature

Hans Fransen. (2009) Erik Laubscher, A Life in Art, Stellenbosch: SMAC Art Gallery. Illustrated in colour on page 205. On the facing page is a photograph of the artist with this work, with the title Dorre Landskap, Namibia.