Alexis Preller (South Africa 1911-1975)
Village Scene

oil on hessian laid down on board

Artwork date: 1938
Signature details: signed and dated bottom left
Exchange Rates*: USD 126 017 – 189 026
GBP 93 097 – 139 645
EURO 106 709 – 160 063

(1)

64.5 x 74.5 cm; framed size: 73.5 x 83.5 x 5 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Cape Town.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

This striking, previously undocumented early painting by Alexis Preller, dating from 1938 and depicting a rural Village Scene, is rendered in vivid oil on hessian. Executed shortly before the artist’s journey to Lake Kivu, the work exemplifies Preller’s experimental approach to materials: raw pigments mixed with an oil-and-turpentine medium produce brilliant, unmodulated colours and lend the surface a fresh, spontaneous vitality. The stylised composition deliberately rejects naturalism in favour of symbolic form. This departure from academic realism, together with its naïve palette, firmly positions Preller within the modernist avant-garde in South Africa. Flattened colour planes and exoticized motifs reveal his admiration for the pure colourism of the Fauves, as well as the influence of Vincent van Gogh and the lush, imagined worlds of Paul Gauguin’s Tahitian scenes.

In late 1937, shortly after returning to South Africa from Paris, where he studied at Académie de la Grande Chaumière and also immersed himself in the study of African sculpture at the Musée du Trocadéro, Preller and his partner, Christi Truter, embarked on an overland journey through Swaziland and Zululand in northern Natal (now KwaZulu-Natal), travelling via the Eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga). This expedition, often referred to as the ‘Mapogga journey’, proved profoundly influential and marked a decisive shift toward an African subject matter and aesthetic in his work.

It is likely that the imagery in this Village Scene draws on these earlier southern African encounters with landscape and people, or on second-hand sources, conceived in anticipation of his later sojourn to the Congo in 1939. Preller’s time in Swaziland and Zululand exposed him to traditional rural life, local cultures, and ritual practices, and by 1938 he was back in South Africa producing fantastical African scenes shaped by memory, imagination, and the circulation of exotic subjects within the Parisian art world.

A rare, early masterpiece, Village Scene offers valuable insight into Preller’s formative engagement with African themes. The work occupies a pivotal position within his oeuvre, providing a vivid glimpse into the young artist’s bold synthesis of African subject matter and modernist technique. Notably, it directly anticipates his celebrated painting Congo Figures of 1939, which achieved R4.52 million at auction through Aspire Art in 2019.

Alexis Preller, Congo Figures, 1939

At this moment in his career, Preller was consciously forging an expression rooted in Africa and this painting stands as compelling testimony to the evolution of his artistic voice and to his lifelong pursuit of an authentic visual language grounded in African experience.

Marelize van Zyl

COLLECTOR'S NOTE:

• In 1938, Alexis Preller joined the New Group, created by Gregoire Boonzaier, Freida Lock, Terrence McCaw and Lippy Lipshitz as a fellowship of like-minded artists embracing new modern approaches to art in South Africa. Preller also participated in the Group’s first exhibition in Cape Town that year.

COLLECTIONS

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town; University of Pretoria Art Collection, Pretoria; Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg; Tate Modern, London; Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C.; British Museum, London and the Guggenheim Museum, New York.