• Strauss & Co offers important Zanzibar-period portrait by Irma Stern
• The Smoker expected to sell for R15 – 17 million / $785 150 – 890 000
• Portrait has featured in two museum surveys of Stern’s work
• Sale prefaces Stern’s triumphant return to Venice Biennale after seven decades
A month before he passed away on 25 December 2015, distinguished art expert and auctioneer Stephan Welz presided over yet another successful sale at Strauss & Co when, on 9 November, he knocked down painter Alexis Preller’s oil and gesso work The Creation of Adam I (1968) for R8.5 million in Johannesburg. The extraordinary sale result established a new South African record for this enigmatic painter.
CAPE TOWN – The Venice Biennale, an important recurring international art exhibition that this year celebrates its sixtieth edition, has over time become a reliable benchmark for judging artist careers. The catalogue for Strauss & Co’s flagship live auction of modern and contemporary art on Tuesday, 19 March 2024 includes work by more than a dozen artists linked to this prestigious international showcase, among them Irma Stern and Zanele Muholi.
Specialists from South Africa’s premier auction house, Strauss & Co, will be visiting Pretoria on Tuesday 2 February 2016 to provide obligation-free valuations to anyone who is considering selling an artwork, or would merely like to discover its value.
Africa is currently leading the art market in terms of gender parity on secondary sales as women artists accounted for 64% of the total of the top 30 artists sales in 2023 (up from 32% in 2022) Source: ArtTactic Modern & Contemporary African Art Market Report.
Strauss & Co’s upcoming auction on Monday 14 March at the Vineyard Hotel in Cape Town offers many exceptional works by major South African artists from JH Pierneef, Hugo Naudé, Walter Battiss, Gerard Sekoto, Gregoire Boonzaier and Erik Laubscher to Robert Hodgins, William Kentridge, Sue Williamson, Athi-Patra Ruga and Ian Grose. Amongst these, Birds and Boats (R700 000 – 900 000) by Maggie Laubser is one of the most charming paintings by this much-loved artist to appear at auction in recent years, according to Senior Art Specialist Emma Bedford.
Strauss & Co’s March ART online auction features a single artist session focusing exclusively on 19th-century British artist and landscape painter Thomas Bowler. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for collectors to acquire pieces directly from a collection curated by Dr. Frank Bradlow, Bowler’s biographer and a luminary in Africana collectables.
Browse, bid or buy from the luxury of your own home on the latest Strauss & Co online auction from 15 – 22 February 2016
Strauss & Co’s March Timed Online Wine auction is themed around the 2014 Vintage. One of the most important measures of great wine is that it should be age-worthy, that it should become more pleasurable and more interesting to drink with time in the bottle. Just how well do modern-era South African wines perform as they get older?
Look out for Strauss & Co’s eye-catching auction catalogue with its amusing cover, Bad Man in Great Threads (R700 000 – 900 000) by Robert Hodgins.
