1st Sep, 2019 9:30
Modern & Contemporary Art
81
Alexis Preller (South Africa 1962-)
Woman in blue
oil on board
Artwork date: 1939
Signature details: signed and dated bottom right
oil on board
Artwork date: 1939
Signature details: signed and dated bottom right
(1)
41 x 32.5 cm
Notes:
Ancouraged by his lifelong friend, architect Norman Eaton, Alexis Preller set off for London in 1934. J.H. Pierneef, who was then working on the South Africa House murals, advised him to enrol at the Westminster School of Art where, under renowned British artist, Mark Gertler, he made a commitment to painting as a career. In 1937 he attended classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, under Othon Friesz, whose more lyrical interpretation of Fauvism can be detected in this portrait. As a student he was fascinated by Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, and on a group exhibition held at the Gainsborough Gallery in Johannesburg in 1937, a reviewer called him the ‘South African Gauguin’. By 1938 he had joined the New Group, where artists like Walter Battiss and Freida Lock sought, in their respective ways, to reconcile their knowledge of European modernism with their experiences of Africa.On a camping trip in Swaziland in 1937, he painted continuously and patterned cloths bought from local trading stores appeared as a constant feature. In the artist’s own words, “in all the early paintings, right through until about 1948, I think, there is this constant use of the Swazi cloth. … it became part of my repertoire … and the tiny little red accenting dots or horns in a painting – I call them ‘direction lines’ …”[i] This patterning is evident in Woman in blue painted in 1939, where her dark eyes and the red patterning surrounding the neckline serve to draw attention to the warm sensuality of flesh and lips in this elegant face.Still-life with mask, also painted in 1939 and acquired by the South African National Gallery collection, has a similar palette of dusty blues and pinks that echoes Woman in blue. Congo Figures, painted in the same year, sold at Aspire Art Auctions in March 2019 for R4,552,000.
Emma Bedford
Sources:
[i] Berman, E. & Nel, K. (2009). Alexis Preller: A Visual Biography: Africa, the Sun and Shadows. Saxonwold: Shelf Publishing, p. 42.
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Auction: Modern & Contemporary Art, 1st Sep, 2019
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