ART WORKS RAISE R106M IN SALES
Strauss & Co’s red-letter autumn auction sale in Cape Town this week brought in a recordbreaking R106m in sales. Some works that went under hammer included Irma Stern’s ‘Arab’; from left, ‘Meditation, Zanzibar’; ‘Still Life with Ginger Plant’; and ‘The Mauve Sari’.
● There was a packed salesroom, and bursts of enthusiastic applause characterised the fierce rivalry among collectors for top paintings, unseen in decades, at Strauss & Co’s red-letter autumn auction in Cape Town.
The sale culminated in a record-breaking tally of R106m in sales at a value sellthrough rate of 93%. This performance is unequalled in the marketplace.
Irma Stern cemented her status as the most sought-after South African artist at auction when three paintings from her celebrated Zanzibar period (1939-1945) sold for a combined R52m.
Adding to the buoyant mood was the sale of Alexis Preller’s seminal cabinet painting, Collected Images (Orchestration of Themes), for just over R10m, a new world record.
Frank Kilbourn, Strauss & Co’s chair, said: “This the first ever art auction in SA to achieve over R100m in sales. The sellthrough rate of 93% is also unprecedented. It is a historic moment for the company and a wonderful way to celebrate our 10th year of business.
“This outstanding result is a major vote of confidence for Strauss & Co, and the South African art market in general. We are especially grateful to our clients, both buyers and sellers, for entrusting their works to us.”
The top-selling lot at Strauss & Co’s sale was a previously unrecorded Stern portrait of an Omani nobleman from the court of the Sultanate of Zanzibar. Painted during Stern’s second visit to Zanzibar, in 1945, and acquired directly from the artist by the late collector Sol Munitz, Arab sold to a telephone bidder for R20,484,000.
The Munitz collection consigned 15 lots to the sale, including Stern’s The Mauve Sari from 1946, which sold for R14,794,000, and Gerard Sekoto’s Saturday Afternoon ,a bucolic street scene from his Eastwood period, which sold for R3,072,600.
Paintings consigned from the Shill collection also achieved outstanding prices. They included the world-record Preller work, as well as Stern’s 1939 portrait of a young woman wearing a yellow headscarf, Meditation, Zanzibar, which sold for R17,070,000, attracting the attention of a first-time Stern buyer. Also from the Shill collection, Gwelo Goodman’s Interior Looking Out, Stellenrust sold for R216,220 and a small bronze of a bull by sculptor Sydney Kumalo achieved R421,060.
The sale also included two important collections of decorative arts, notably a fine selection of Chinese and Japanese ceramics, and art works from the JR and Mary Strong collection. International bidders vied by telephone for the Chinese pieces. A celadon and beige jade two-handled vase with fiveclawed dragon motifs from the late Qing dynasty notably sold for R227,600.
Founded in 2009, Strauss & Co is the world’s leading auction house for South African art. Its next sale will be held at the Wanderers Club in Johannesburg in May.