oil on board

Signature details: signed with the artist's initials bottom left; adhered with a National Gallery of South Africa label on the reverse

(1)

28 x 35 cm; framed size: 51 x 58 x 5 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Johannesburg.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

The Garda Lake, the largest lake in Italy, has long been a much-loved tourist destination. A magical area of towering peaks, charming villages and water, said to be crystal clear, magnificent villas were present on the lake’s shore from Roman times. Coming from all corners of the globe, people have been attracted to its great beauty for centuries and in the early 20^th century the scenic area was a place of great inspiration for South Africa’s own Maggie Laubser. The beloved South African artist, would live and work near the lake between 1919 and 1920, after traveling to Italy with friend and painter, Arnold Balwé, son of Laubser’s benefactor J. H. A. Balwé.

Notably, as Laubser was traveling to Italy, she was arrested in Munich, Germany, when she did not have a visa. The momentary pause in her travels would allow her to step into and experience the city and the art of the German Expressionists, who she felt very drawn to. This experience would change the artist’s trajectory, as “[i]t was a confrontation that fused the meditative pastoral simplicity of her youth with the turbulent anxiety about the War. The blatant honesty of Expressionism stood in shrill contrast to the parlour niceties of academism…It was an assault that liberated her from accumulated repression from her background. This arrest gained her entry into a province of aesthetics that would stake out a permanent claim for her in the territory of South African art”.[1]

Laubser’s Lake Garda, Italy, with its expressive and gestural brushstrokes, bold simplified shapes and brilliant colours seems a humble ode to a significant moment in the artist’s early career. In 1921 Laubser returned to South Africa for about a year, after which she returned to Europe – to Germany where she lived in Berlin for two years from 1922 to 1924. Here she had contact with Irma Stern, with whom she had a painting holiday on the Baltic Sea and met German Expressionist painters, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Pechstein and Emil Nolde. Laubser returned permanently to South Africa in 1924.

The expressive landscapes depicted by the artists were recently showcased and celebrated in Cape Town by the Norval Foundation’s prestigious exhibition Maggie Laubser: Portraits and the Landscape 1886 – 1973 (2023). The exceptional works included on the show were curated as a companion to another recent exhibition at Norval, The Zanzibari Years: Irma Stern (2022). The two remarkable women artists were pioneers in introducing expressionism to a conservative South Africa and the collection showcased changes in Laubser’s artistic styles, influence and concerns throughout time.

^{[1] Van Rooyen, J. (1987). Maggie Laubser. Cape Town: C. Struik Publishers, p.11.}

COLLECTOR'S NOTES

Maggie Laubser features in Foreigners Everywhere, the main exhibition at this year’s 60th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.

COLLECTIONS:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; Johannesburg Art Gallery; Pretoria Art Museum; Durban Art Gallery; A. C. White Gallery, Bloemfontein and the Rupert Museum, Stellenbosch.