Notes

‘In 1973, after an abstention from one-man exhibitions for five years, Laubscher exhibited at the SA Association of Arts in Cape Town. With that exhibition he reached a major breakthrough with one of his paintings, Rape of District Six ‘72. This work represents a new departure and change in his style of painting by introducing emotional reactions into the problem of space and colour, like Cézanne, Laubscher is ‘trying to express perspective entirely through colour’.

Laubscher paints what he wishes to see, an individual version of ‘that abstraction called Nature’, which, while it may give pleasure, does not always create diversity. In this painting we have the artist working through experiences which enable him to respond fully to his surroundings. With a palette limited to reds, blacks, whites, and greys, he expresses his emotions. He thinks in paint rather than form, and uses his heritage of the South African landscape to express the quality of his environment.

The present lot, Rape of District Six ‘72, is a sociological comment on the very destruction of his environment. The ominous large abstract shapes are in sharp contrast to the aggressive textural foreground. This is a cruel, almost violent, painting. The reds are aggressive, the writing on the wall is a symbol of despair, a mocking of humanity. This is the environment which is so quickly being destroyed, which has made Laubscher aware not so much of the spatial abstract forms of the human environment of people and places around him.’¹

1.  Edwine Simon, Erik Laubscher: An 1973 Assessment, in Heine Toerien and Georges Duby (eds) (n.d.) Our Art 3, Pretoria: Foundation for Education, Science and Technology, page 112. 

Provenance

Stephan Welz & Co in association with Sotheby’s, Cape Town, 18 March 2002, lot 423.

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

Exhibited

SA Association of Arts, Cape Town, 1973.

Literature

Heine Toerien and Georges Duby (eds) (n.d.) Our Art 3, Pretoria: Foundation for Education, Science and Technology, illustrated on page 113, figure XI.