ART WORLD LEADERS: Marlene Dumas, Irma Stern & Lisa Brice this month at Strauss & Co

4 Mar 2024

Spearheaded by Julie Mehretu, Marlene Dumas, Irma Stern and Njideka Akunyili Crosby, there were ten women amongst the top thirty Modern and Contemporary African artists in 2023. Women artists under the age of 45 also accounted for 20.6% of the NextGen auction sales, up from 18.8% in 2022 and African women artists have not only found parity in sales totals, in 2023 they exceeded the totals of their male counterparts, with women seeing a market share of 54.8%.

Strauss & Co will offer major works by Brice, Stern this March following International Women’s Day celebrations. Available for immediate purchase is a rare example of Marlene Dumas’ early work.

Ten Years Gone by Lisa Brice from 2009 will return to Cape Town to lead Strauss & Co’s auction on 19 March 2024 and is estimated at (estimate 1 600 000-2 000 000/$83 200 – 104 000). It is from a series of five ink paintings and photographs partly produced in Trinidad, yet also largely based on observed scenes in London.

• Lisa Brice was born in 1968 and raised in South Africa. Her 1993 debut solo was composed of assured paintings exploring feminist themes. Brice, though, was unconvinced of painting’s relevance in a changing South Africa, and jettisoned painting in favour of sculpture, installation and lens-based media.
• In 1998, having achieved considerable status in her homeland, Brice travelled to London for an artists’ residency and this brief sojourn turned into a permanent relocation. In 1999, Brice travelled to the dual-island Caribbean nation of Trinidad and Tobago to participate in another residency. She was immediately smitten and kept returning.
• Trinidad was important in Brice’s rediscovery of painting. Here she met and befriended painters Peter Doig and Emheyo Bahabba, aka Embah. Their influence is palpable, albeit indirectly. Brice later acquired land in Grand Rivière, a small village on the north coast.
• Ten Years Gone is from of a series of five large-scale ink paintings, of which four described trees and domestic dwellings. Painted in greys and greens, the work was exhibited in Johannesburg in 2009. Skilfully composed, the paintings seem purposefully unfinished, as if rendered from a dream rather than photos.
• Photography played an important role in Brice’s research when she returned to painting in the early 2000s with a chance discovery of the night-vision mode in her new digital camera led to her first suite of paintings of the new millennium.
• The landscape subject of this painting might seem atypical given Brice’s current feminist subjects. It adds to its rarity.

Irma Stern – The Smoker, 1945

The Smoker was painted during Stern’s second visit to Zanzibar in 1945 and is a testament to her improvisational yet sincere approach. It will also be sold on 19 March and is estimated at R15-17 million/ $780,000-890,000  

• Throughout her career, Stern’s art reflected her passion for and engagement with diverse cultures and communities. Committed to portraying Zanzibarians of all social classes as individuals, she brought to her portraits the same intensity and careful observation of individual character that define the portraits she painted of her friends and individuals in her immediate circle.
• Irma Stern’s artistic journeys to Zanzibar, first in 1939 and again in 1945, resulted in a series of celebrated portraits which are highly valued for their mastery of form and subject.
• Her portraits aimed to capture the individuality of the Zanzibarian people rather than stereotyping them. Already familiar with Zanzibar from numerous shipboard journeys to Europe, Stern’s determination to spend time on the island gave her a chance to immerse herself in the island’s dominant Muslim culture.
• As a non-observant Jew with a keen interest in world religions, Stern had a history of depicting scenes of religious faith and ceremony, and by extension the individuals who practised those faiths.
• The Zanzibari works are in effect a continuation of an earlier project on Cape Muslims, which evolved into a broader exploration of Islam in Africa, including a stay in Dakar in 1938.

PRIVATE SALE
Marlene Dumas – Love Lost, 1973-74

Love Lost, available for private sale from Strauss & Co, is a rare example of Dumas’ work from her early period. This piece holds significant importance in tracing the trajectory of her artistic development.

• Marlene Dumas, the world-renowned contemporary artist born in South Africa and currently residing in the Netherlands, is widely recognized as one of the most influential painters of our time.
• Her early work consolidates the themes of identity, memory, sexuality and social commentary that reverberate throughout her later pieces.
• Her paintings and drawings derive from a diverse array of source materials, including art historical references, mass media imagery, and personal photographs, refl ecting her multifaceted exploration of human experience.
• During the early 1970s, Dumas commenced her formal artistic education at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in Cape Town. It was during this period that she began to develop her distinctive style, characterised by expressive brushwork, vibrant colours and a keen emphasis on figuration.
• Throughout the following decades, she garnered acclaim for her provocative and emotionally charged paintings, which tackled humanist themes of love, loss, memory and mortality. Dumas’ ability to evoke empathy and introspection in her paintings solidified her reputation as one of the most significant contemporary artists of her generation.
• The recently published ArtTactic Report (2016-2023) underscores her enduring appeal at market. Dumas was the top-selling Southern African artist between 2016 and 2023, achieving $55.7 million in auction sales during this period from 117 lots sold.