A rare treat for book lovers
STRAUSS & CO: SINGLE-OWNER COLLECTABLES ON SALE Art pieces will also come under the hammer at the week-long online sale.
Strauss & Co’s Property of a Johannesburg book designer sale, which runs from 1 to 8 March, is unprecedented in the premier auction house’s history. Featuring an eclectic array of paintings, prints, sculpture and furniture, as well as more than 100 rare and exciting art, design, photography and architecture books, the lots come from the collection of an international, award-winning specialist designer, active in the UK, South Africa and Southeast Asia over the last 35 years.
The books, mostly grouped into bulk lots of up to 20 at rock-bottom estimates, are a dazzling collection that will appeal to art and book lovers alike.
There are few other opportunities to acquire a single lot of eight collectable books o n the work of iconic South African photographer David Goldblatt, or 11 on British abstract modernist sculptor Sir Anthony Caro, or nine seminal books of South African art market luminary William Kentridge.
A few uncommon collectibles, such as Hockney’s Alphabet (David Hockney and Stephen Spender,
Faber & Faber, 1991) and Battiss 75 (Murray Schoonraad and Pieter Duminy, D & S, 1981) are stand-alone items, while a lot of 11 South African art books, signed by artists and authors including Cecily Sash, Alf Kumalo and Norman Catherine, is bound to attract energetic bidding during the week-long sale.
The art going under the hammer includes a drawing by Alexis Preller of the African Slit Drum that appears in his major series of Kraal paintings executed i n the late 1940s, a select archive of Preller memorabilia, including exhibition catalogues from 1947 and 1972, and the auction catalogues from the estate sales of the artist and his partner Guna Massyn in the 1970s, along with a pristine example of the Preller monograph Africa, The Sun and Shadows, signed by both the authors, Esmé Berman and Karel Nel.
Master colourist Andrew Verster is represented by one of the hauntingly beautiful oil on canvas works from his immensely popular Fragile Paradise series.
Two standout works depicting horses by Noria Mabasa, doyenne of South African ceramic sculpture, are bound to attract private and institutional interest, and two unusual mixed media works by Joni Brenner indicate the depth of this thoughtful contemporary artist’s creative practice. A collection of largescale exterior and diminutive table-top pieces by Cape-based abstract sculptor Rodan KaneHart that investigate the infinite possibilities of geometric composition will delight collectors familiar with his work and attract a myriad of new devotees.
One of the works includes the publication Rodan Kane-Hart: At Work (Bad Paper, 2017) as a sculptural base.
Other artists represented include Allen Jones, Henry Moore, Lucas Nkgweng and Richard Serra.