{"id":86271,"date":"2017-01-30T20:53:39","date_gmt":"2017-01-30T18:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/inaugural-cape-auction-2017-highlights\/"},"modified":"2017-01-30T20:53:39","modified_gmt":"2017-01-30T18:53:39","slug":"inaugural-cape-auction-2017-highlights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/inaugural-cape-auction-2017-highlights\/","title":{"rendered":"Inaugural Cape Auction 2017 Highlights"},"content":{"rendered":"

Inaugural Cape Auction 2017 Highlights<\/a>: <\/p>\n

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David Goldblatt | Before the fight: amateur boxing at the Town Hall, Boksburg | 1980 | silver gelatin print on fibre-based paper | 39.5 x 31 cm Photo: Supplied<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Following the record breaking success of Aspire Art Auction\u2019s Inaugural Auction, held in Johannesburg in October 2016, the eagerly awaited Inaugural Cape Auction will offer a diverse range of top quality historic, modern and contemporary fine art.<\/p>\n

World Travels
Two key examples of JH Pierneef\u2019s remarkable landscape paintings will be on offer, each never before seen at auction. Vrystaat Re\u00ebn, painted in 1943, depicts a welcome scatter of rain over a parched landscape, just as the sun attempts to break through a sky of billowing clouds. As the title suggests, A View across Fisherman\u2019s Cove, Seychelles, painted in 1955, is a breathtaking vista across a calm bay, dotted with waiting fishing boats and lined by palm trees. Treasured photographs of Pierneef standing on those very shores, as well as the diary entries of a close friend on that same island trip, add to the romance of the scene.<\/p>\n

Painted \u2018in the open air\u2019, Pieter Wenning\u2019s At Riverside Road, Newlands captures the soft yet dramatic changes of twilight on the lush vegetation growing in the shadow of Table Mountain. An exciting range of work by the experimental Modernist, Christo Coetzee will be on offer – from his mesmerizing blend of texture, form and colour in Black Rose Africa 71, to the enigmatic assemblage piece, Italian Heads.<\/p>\n

A pioneering woman of her time, Eleanor Esmonde-White traveled frequently, sketching scenes of daily life from Cape Town to Corfu. Capturing three voluptuous women, lost in thought, Esmonde-White\u2019s Nudes is a marvelous example of her focus on the female form and the warmth of her limited palette. The playful humour of the great colourist, Robert Hodgins, is evident in the suggestive shapes of Lamb Chop, and the bulging silhouettes of Sunset Jocks, seen amidst the jumble of city life.<\/p>\n

Contemporary African art
William Kentridge\u2019s Grande Jet\u00e9, an early, large-scale drawing bought directly by the seller from Kentridge\u2019s Standard Bank Young Artist Award solo exhibition in 1987, is attracting much attention. Already suggesting Kentridge\u2019s interest in the mechanics of theatricality, there is a graceful tension in the young female ballet dancer suspended, mid-air, against a colosseum of indeterminate spectators.<\/p>\n

The suburban ballerina of David Goldblatt\u2019s Girl in her new tutu on the stoep is frozen, too, in time. This key, early black and white photograph was used on the cover of Goldblatt\u2019s In Boksburg, one of South Africa\u2019s earliest photobooks published in 1982. Of the same series and also handprinted by Goldblatt himself from his studio in Felside, Before the fight: amateur boxing at the Town Hall, Boksburg, is an arresting moment which documents the surreal nuances of white, middle-class life in a small town during apartheid. Another remarkable photograph on offer is a panorama of Pollsmoor Prison, made up of multiple images stitched together, from Mikhael Subotzky\u2019s acclaimed \u2018Die Vier Hoeke\u2019 series.<\/p>\n

A re-imagining of identity is evident in a number of upcoming works by leading contemporary artists. Kudzanai Chiurai draws our attention to the artifice of propaganda in his satirical portrait, The Black President. In Athi-Patra Ruga\u2019s vibrant tapestry, Castrato as [the] Revolution, the identity of a provocatively posed male figure is obscured. In contrast, Adams\u2019 Parda IV is absorbing in its abstraction, a delicate interweaving of coloured nylon and rope which both attracts and displaces the viewer\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n

The use of the artist\u2019s own body, and the prominence of performance in contemporary art, is seen in the works on offer by Nandipha Mntambo, Mohau Modisakeng and Steven Cohen. Wearing an armour of cow hide, Mntambo explores the troubled traditions of bull fighting in the abandoned Pra\u00e7a de Touros, Maputo. Modisakeng, one of two artists to be featured for the South African Pavilion in the 57th\u00a0Venice Biennale in 2017, stills time in his suggestions of the violence intrinsic to post-colonial societies in Ditaola XV. The photograph of Cohen, bedecked in vertiginous heels and a chandelier tutu as he teeters through Newton, Johannesburg, was taken during one of his most pivotal performances.<\/p>\n

For more information, visit www.aspireart.net<\/p>\n

Inaugural Cape Town Auction 2017
Avenue | V & A Waterfront | 40 Dock Road | Cape Town
27 March 2017 | Evening Sale | 8pm<\/p>\n

Auction preview:
Friday 24 March | 10am to 5pm
Saturday 25 March | 10am to 5pm
Sunday 26 March | 10am to 4pm<\/p>\n

Exhibition walkabouts:
Saturday 25 March & Sunday 26 March | 11am<\/p>\n

For queries, please contact Emma Bedford | emma@aspireart.net | +27 83 391 7235<\/p>\n

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