oil on canvas

(1)

153 x 123 cm

Notes:

Alexis Preller continues to have a significant presence in the local auction market and has become a more rareified and selective signature for international collectors. Values in an established virtuous collecting cycle for his work in the South African market, buoyed by the appearance in 2009 of Berman and Nel’s magisterial biographical monograph[i], have remained constantly high for the right works in the decade or so since his paintings first breached the R1m mark. Since then, top-quality examples from across his oeuvre began to find their way to market as owners became keen to capitalise on the rise in value.The uniqueness of his oeuvre is only fully appreciated today, after much of his finest work has come to auction. What can, with hindsight, be identified as the final phase in his career is marked by being somewhat more cosmic and esoteric, often in work that is more gestural and textured. A group of these paintings, using Preller’s visioning of the biblical figure of Adam, appear regularly in his later years, and the Christ Head figure, as in this work, is by this late phase an established lineage in his iconography. But the painting is by no means only about the three-quarter profile figure in its centre. Some exhaustive art historical forensic work has established the painting as the last one Preller worked on before his death in 1975.The uncharacteristically large piece is shown in situ in the final sequence of the SABC documentary on Preller from the 1970s. In their biographical catalogue, Berman and Nel mention another work, Marathon II (1975), as being the very last finished work the artist touched before his death, immediately prior to its shipping to Johannesburg’s Goodman Gallery for his final exhibition.[ii] This makes Christ Head conclusively his final work. Further infrared analysis of the painting by researchers at the University of Pretoria has very recently established that Preller had applied the layer of white oil paint surrounding the Christ head deliberately, over an undercoat, and had been in the process of finishing the overpainting of the work which explains its lack of signature. The scientific process exposed the paint layer below, comprised of yellow, green and turquoise hues echoing the forms and shades seen above the figure’s eyes. The fact that the white area surrounding the head was applied in oil paint, rather than a primer, indicates that this was intentionally a top-layer application which was meant to be visible to the viewer. Perhaps this was intended to mimic Preller’s three-dimensional intaglio paintings, except as an inverted two-dimensional version. Other prognoses indicate that the white paint was intended as a base for a lighter halo-like form to ensconce the head. What Preller’s exact intention was will forever remain unclear, a fact that only adds to the mystery and enigma associated with this distinctive and extraordinary artwork. Christ Head is therefore by definition a unique painting – and by definition never before seen anywhere in the art collecting market.

James Sey and Ruarc Peffers

Sources:

[i]Berman, E. and Nel, K. (2010) Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows. Johannesburg: Pan MacMillan/Shelf.

[ii]Ibid. p. 322.