25th Mar, 2018 18:00
Historic, Modern & Contemporary Art
123
Erik Laubscher (South African 1927-2013)
Graanlandery
acrylic and mixed media on canvas
Artwork date: 1969
Signature details: signed and dated; inscribed with the title on the reverse
acrylic and mixed media on canvas
Artwork date: 1969
Signature details: signed and dated; inscribed with the title on the reverse
(1)
92 x 122 cm
Notes:
Erik Laubscher is renowned for his distinctive, hard-edged portrayals of the countryside in the Western Cape region during the 1960s. This stylistic approach to depicting the rural
scenery of the Overberg area across the Hottentots-Holland mountains, the Swartland and Klein Karoo, revealed his acute observation of the structural elements (natural and man-made) that constitute each area. He translated this onto canvas as a compositional arrangement of simplified forms with flat planes of bold colour variations. The visual expressiveness of these hard-edged landscapes were ground-breaking at the time.Graanlandery was painted in 1967, a time of renewed artistic energy and output for Laubscher. He had just returned from a three-month study sabbatical in the United States on a Carnegie grant and was working on a new series of paintings for his solo exhibition at the newly opened Wolpe Gallery in Cape Town later that year. Laubscher’s abstract rendering of this cultivated landscape shows a clear outline of shapes; the contours of the wheat fields, the track of tarred road, and the subtle curves of the hillside that meets the sky of thinly layered clouds. Each shape is schematically filled with colour, painted flat except at the bottom of the composition, where he introduces a textured area for visual effect. The painted image continues, physically, over the sides of the stretcher frame. This was a device Laubscher incorporated in many of his landscape paintings at the time, to convey the feeling that the scene pictured continues outside of the frame, while still being compositionally contained within it. His considered palette is based on the colour theories of Ben Cunningham, whom he met in the United States.It introduces warm yellows and dusky mustards, with subtle hints of cool grey and blues to convey a late winter scene, the fields ready for harvest time. This painting is powerful in its simplicity, showing the artist’s balanced approach between an applied formalism and his fascination with the reality from which it is derived – the landscape views he so loved.
Marelize van Zyl
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Auction: Historic, Modern & Contemporary Art, 25th Mar, 2018
Aspire Art Auctions brought a unique offering to their second auction in the Cape allowing buyers to add quality and rarity to their collections.
Headlining the success of the auction was as a rare intaglio by Alexis Preller, Gold Angel (Arêté), which sold for R4 638 400. The piece was part of Preller’s last body of work shown at the Goodman Gallery in 1975, and took its place alongside the sale of his mid-period work, the exquisite small study Still life with Vase and Carved Head, which sold for R811 720. Other auction highlights included work by contemporary artists Robert Hodgins, Athi-Patra Ruga, Zander Blom, and Penny Siopis and sculpture by Deborah Bell, Willem Boshoff, Wim Botha, and Amadlozi alumnus Sydney Kumalo.
Viewing
Friday 23 March 2018 | 10 am – 5 pm
Saturday 24 March 2018 | 10 am – 5 pm
Sunday 25 March 2018 | 10 am – 3 pm
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