Notes

Drawing was fundamental to Stern’s output. It was a means to record direct encounter, both in her studio as well as in the field. It frequently provided the basic armature for more ambitious painted works, but Stern also produced a number of drawings – in pencil, ink, chalk, conté and pastel – that were fully-realized compositions. This wonderful pastel drawing of a veiled woman captures Stern’s instinctual and assured use of line and raw mark to evoke her sitter. Unlike the notational drawings appearing in her artists’ book Zanzibar (1948), this work is a
complete statement.

Veils recur in Stern’s depictions of Muslim women in Cape Town and Zanzibar. “In this Eastern world the woman has no rights,” writes Stern in Zanzibar. “They run about like ghosts, black, with their Jashmak [headscarf, from Turkish yashmak] covering their faces and bodies. Each nation of the East has a different way of hiding their females.”¹

In 1946, Stern presented a comprehensive showcase of her drawings at I.D. Booksellers’ Gallery in Cape Town. The 60 works included works from Madeira, Belgian Congo, Cape Town (of Cape Muslims), as well as black conté and ink wash drawings from her second trip to Zanzibar in 1945. The exhibition included works on brown paper. “In these drawings the artist has wasted neither time nor line in saying what she wants to say,” reported The Argus. “It is direct and forceful work … Her work, whether with pen or pencil or brush, goes on to the paper to stay.”²

^1. Irma Stern (1948) Zanzibar, Pretoria: JL van Schaik Limited, page 45.
^2. — (1946) “Exhibition for Connoisseurs”, Cape Argus, 9 October.

Provenance

The Irma Stern Trust Collection, accession number 861.