Notes

Beset by ill health, Irma Stern spent extended periods of her final years convalescing in Europe. In 1961, after seeking medical care in Basel, she took up residence in a hotel in the Spanish port city of Alicante. She returned again in 1962 for another long stay. Having seen her latent orientalism blossom in her earlier Zanzibar paintings, Stern’s decision to paint in Spain – a Muslim territory from 711 to 1492 – was not incidental. ‘This is a fantastic part of Europe,’ remarked Stern. ‘The people seem half-Spanish, half-Arab and it makes a very pleasant mixture.’¹

Her work regime involved substantial exploration – Stern frequently drove out to the fields and groves surrounding Alicante to record the labours of tomato, almond and olive pickers – followed by retreat to the studio. The quick drawings she made in the field guided her studio work. This confidently delineated and thinly painted oil offers a window to explore the rich history of olive cultivation in southeast Spain, but it is more profitable, especially given Stern’s keen awareness of art history, to consider the correspondences with Vincent van Gogh’s 1889 portrayals of olive pickers at Saint-Rémy in Provence. 

Stern esteemed Van Gogh; she even wrote that she had matched him technically. Her contemporary Matthys Bokhorst agreed, but conceded that her late paintings, of which this is a fine example, were technically different from Van Gogh: ‘In matters of form, she simplifies, economises, underlines, outlines, abstracts or distorts ad libitum, but always purposefully, when taken in the context of the composition.’² Stern’s Alicante paintings are among her most celebrated late-career paintings. When she exhibited them in Cape Town in 1963, Neville Dubow characterized her studies of ‘elemental acts’ as the finest works on show.³ Painter Carl Büchner concurred, singling out her olive harvest painting as ‘rugged and noble’, epitomising the ‘dignity of man’s pursuits and labours’.⁴

1.  Staff Reporter (1961) ‘Irma Stern paints in Spain’, Cape Argus, 20 April.

2.  MatthysBokhorst (1961) ‘Art show is the result of six months’ activity’, Cape Times, 5 September.

3.  Neville Dubow (1963) ‘Astonishing creativity of Irma Stern shows in new exhibition’, Cape Argus, 2 May.

4.  Carl Büchner (1963) ‘Artist has mature, selective vision’, Cape Times, 3 May.

Provenance

Stephan Welz & Co in association with Sotheby’s, Johannesburg, 17 April 2007, lot 523.

The Tasso Foundation Collection of Important South African Art assembled by the Late Giulio Bertrand of Morgenster Estate.

Literature

Francesco Matteucci (2012) Minerva’s Gift, Italy: Editrice La Rocca Marsciano (PG), illustrated on page 411.