carved, incised and painted wood panels

Artwork date: 1960
Signature details: right panel signed and dated

(3 )

168 x 83 cm each; 168 x 249 cm combined

Provenance:

Private collection, Johannesburg.

Notes:

Homestead is an exceptional large-scale example of Cecil Skotnes’ unique, strongly graphic carved and incised wood panels – a medium for which he is today well-known and widely-celebrated.

Early in his career, Skotnes focused on painting but in the mid-1950s he started experimenting with wood cuts. The artist had seen a series of woodcuts by a German artist, Rudolph Scharpf, who used to exhibit at Egon Guenther’s gallery in Johannesburg. Skotnes was intrigued by Scharpf’s black and white woodcuts and, in an interview with art historian Neville Dubow, recalled that he “swallowed up his technique almost wholesale”, doing “nothing but black and white woodcuts” from 1956-1959.[1]

The printing technique opened a wealth of possibilities for Skotnes and he developed into a notable graphic artist. But he soon realised the limitations of printmaking. Why not use the wood block itself as an artistic medium?Instead of cutting the block and then using it as a means to an end, Skotnes started to transform the blocks into artworks, colouring and cutting them and using them as a surface for paint and pigment. The new wood panel works were much larger than the woodcuts and the medium allowed for wonderful textural creations.

In Homestead, the incised depressions reveal the natural colour of the wood in stark contrast to the raised, black, stained and flat areas. Although he would later include browns and ochres, and then earthen reds and sandy yellows, Skotnes, in his early wood panels, often only used the natural wood, areas of black, white and grey. In this way, the relatively monotone works still held strong ties to the black and white wood block prints of the late 1950s – from which the medium had developed.

In 1959, Skotnes entered his first wood panel Figure into the São Paulo Art Biennial

in Brazil where he represented South Africa. Homestead was produced only a year later and is a rare and early wood panel produced at a formative stage in the development of Skotnes’ much-loved signature style.

Sarah Sinisi

[1] Dubow, N. (1996). Landscapes of the Mind. In F, Harmsen (Ed.). Cecil Skotnes (pp. 111-127). Cape Town: Privately Published. p.113.

Collections:

The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, Norval Foundation, Cape Town.; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town.; The South African Reserve Bank, Johannesburg.; Anglo American Corporation, New York and the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen.