Portway to Cohen: A Collector’s Legacy and Other Properties

5 Feb 2026

The culmination of Strauss & Co’s February energetic programme of auctions, exhibitions and talks, the live-virtual sale Portway to Cohen: A Collector’s Legacy and Other Properties (21 February 2026 at 6pm) brings together a focused selection of contemporary South African painting assembled by a discerning worldly collector, complemented by works from other properties.

The sale features important works by internationally recognised artists including Norman Catherine, Esther Mahlangu and Douglas Portway, each of whom has played a distinct role in shaping the visibility and development of South African art beyond the country’s borders. Catherine’s work was famously collected by David Bowie, Mahlangu was the only South African artist included in the landmark exhibition Les Magiciens de la Terre (1989) in Paris, and Portway made formative contributions to painterly abstraction in both South Africa and Great Britain.

Largely drawn from a single, thoughtfully assembled collection, Portway to Cohen: A Collector’s Legacy and Other Properties traces divergent pathways in painting from the early 1960s to the present. Mossel Bay (estimate R80 000 – 120 000), a 1961 marine scene by self-taught expressionist painter Gladys Mgudlandlu, is the earliest work on offer.

The sale title acknowledges the pivotal role of Douglas Portway in the history of South African abstraction. Trained at the Witwatersrand Technical College, Portway later taught at the University of the Witwatersrand before emigrating to Europe in 1959. He settled in Cornwall in 1967, becoming an important member of the St Ives School. Work from this period is held in the Tate collection.

Painted in 1989 and exhibited at the South African National Gallery in 2007, Portway’s Untitled I (estimate R80 000–120 000) exemplifies the diaphanous light and tranquil order that characterise his mature abstraction, translating those qualities into a restrained still-life format.

Norman Catherine’s large relief painting from 1994, Close Shave (estimate R250 000 – 350 000), also acquired by the featured collector, dates from a crucial moment in the international emergence of South African contemporary art. Combining playful, cartoon-like forms with darker thematic undertones, the work typifies the artist’s maturing style in the mid-1990s. It was painting in this idiom that caught the attention of David Bowie during a visit to Johannesburg in 1995. He acquired his first work by Catherine shortly thereafter, in London, and later praised the “scintillating youthfulness” of the artist’s vision.

Catherine, Portway and Mgudlandlu aside, other notable painters represented from the featured single-owner collection include Sanell Aggenbach, Breyten Breytenbach, Alexandra Karakashian, Mustafa Maluka, Gladys Mgudlandlu, Mongezi Ncaphayi, Malcolm Payne, Deborah Poynton and Andrew Verster. Several of these artists share important links with the Netherlands.

Ncaphayi was awarded the prestigious Thami Mnyele Foundation Residency in Amsterdam, in 2016, the same year he received a grant from the Prince Claus Fund. Early in his career, Maluka received mentorship from Marlene Dumas, while Breytenbach held his debut solo exhibition in Amsterdam in 1964. A large Breytenbach mural commissioned by the Poetry International Foundation remains installed on Gaffel Street in Rotterdam.

Paris played a more prominent role in the careers of other painters in the sale, notably Esther Mahlangu and Stanley Pinker. Mahlangu’s distinctive Ndebele-inspired visual language was central to Les Magiciens de la Terre and has since found expression in major exhibitions and site-specific commissions worldwide. Her most recent outdoor mural for the Serpentine Gallery, completed in late 2024, remains on view in the Serpentine North Garden until 22 February 2026.

Painted in 2021, her untitled composition with Ndebele patterns and green centre (estimate R150 000–200 000) appears in the sale alongside works by Ayanda Mabulu, Stanley Pinker and Kylie Wentzel consigned from various private collections. A highlight of this broader offering is Pinker’s monumental diptych His and Hers / Decline and Fall (1991, estimate R1.6–2 million), a satirical and incisive examination of the follies and contradictions of colonial and post-colonial white society in South Africa. While living in London and Nice in the 1950s, working for various publishers as an illustrator, Pinker would frequently visit the Musée de Louvre in Paris.

Portway to Cohen: A Collector’s Legacy and Other Properties forms a centrepiece of Strauss & Co’s busy February programme and is complemented by Hair Matters: A Selection of Works from the Georgina Jaffee Collection, a single-owner sale exploring hair as material, metaphor and site of meaning in contemporary art (21 February 2026 at 4pm). The online-only sale Woven Legacies: Fibre & Form features art and artefacts from Southern, Central and Western Africa, and is guest curated by textile collector Michael Heuermann (closes 11 February 2026). Strauss & Co is hosting three public talks at the 2026 Investec Cape Town Art Fair, to be presented consecutively on Friday, 20 February 2026, from 3pm to 7pm.

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February auctions:

Following on this suite of early February online sales are two special themed auctions to look out for:

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Upcoming Exhibitions: