Major works by Sekoto and Siopis headline Strauss & Co’s flagship modern and contemporary sale

27 May 2026

Two extraordinary paintings by Gerard Sekoto and Penny Siopis, celebrated artists admired for their creative engagement with social life in South Africa, lead an impressive consignment of high-value paintings in Strauss & Co’s live-virtual Evening Sale: Modern and Contemporary Art. Painted fifty years apart, at either end of the defining historical event of high apartheid (1948–90), the two works will be offered to collectors on Tuesday, 26 May 2026 at 7pm, along with rare and exceptional works by Walter Battiss, William Kentridge, Maggie Laubser, George Pemba, JH Pierneef and Alexis Preller.

Many of these artists are listed in London-based consultancy ArtTactic’s table of the 30 top African artists sold at auction in 2025, part of an optimistic report detailing an upswing in collector interest in modern and contemporary art from Africa.

Produced during his sojourn in Johannesburg in 1939–40, Gerard Sekoto’s Horse and Cart, Sophiatown (estimate R3 – 4 million / $181 950 – 242 600) depicts ambulating figures and the titular horse and cart in an expansive suburban landscape. Sekoto’s animated street scene offers an important record of Sophiatown, a mixed-race settlement systematically demolished by apartheid authorities between 1955 and early 1960s.

Stylistically, his work is comparable to Alexis Preller’s early Van Gogh-inspired works such as Breying the Riems (1935), sold by Strauss & Co for R1.7 million in 2016. Horse and Cart, Sophiatown dates from a formative period, when Sekoto moved to Johannesburg – a “longed-for destination” in the artist’s words – and roomed with his cousins in Gerty Street, Sophiatown. He received informal lessons in oil painting from fellow artist Judith Gluckman, a close friend of Preller, and was invited to show with the New Group, an association of progressive painters.

One of the most important contemporary paintings ever to come to market at Strauss & Co, the large, multi-part painting Al Fresco (estimate R3 – 4 million / $181 950 – 242 600) presents Penny Siopis at the height of her powers, equally attentive to the material surface of painting and the burdens of history carried within images. First presented in her acclaimed solo exhibition at Goodman Gallery in 1990 – artist-critic Kendell Geers, writing in The Star, hailed it as the artist’s “most engaging exhibition yet” – this important painting was included in Siopis’s first major European museum retrospective at EMΣT | The National Museum of Contemporary Art Athens in 2024.

Extending her earlier, lavishly painted allegories of excess and plenitude, Siopis began in the late 1980s to incorporate appropriated images from history textbooks, newspapers and journals into her paintings. Al Fresco harnesses this collagist method to focus on South Africa’s history of resource extraction and incorporates illustrations of early gold mining on the Witwatersrand, as well as opencast diamond mining at Kimberley.

Together, these works affirm the strength and diversity of South African painting across generations. Gerard Sekoto, one of the few black South African artists to achieve prominence before apartheid, is admired for his humanist depictions of black urban life produced prior to his permanent self-imposed move to Paris in 1947. Penny Siopis, who emerged from Johannesburg’s experimental art milieu in the 1980s, is revered for an influential multidisciplinary practice spanning painting, installation and film, and for work that powerfully combines aesthetic and political inquiry.

This presentation at auction coincides with a strong resurgence in interest among collectors in modern and contemporary art from Africa.

“In 2025, amid ongoing global economic and geopolitical uncertainty, the African modern and contemporary art market demonstrated a notable recovery, with total sales value rising by 42.6% from 2025,” reports ArtTactic in its latest 2025 report. “African artists generated confidence and momentum after the previous year’s contraction. This positive trajectory was further supported by a 12.5% increase in the number of lots sold, highlighting sustained collector demand.”

Among the artists listed in 30 top African artists at auction in 2025 are William Kentridge, J.H. Pierneef and Alexis Preller. Featured in the Evening Sale, Alexis Preller’s The Portuguese Birds (estimate R500 000 – 700 000 / $30 325 – 42 455) presents seven highly stylised, carved bird figures arranged in an interior landscape. The repatriated work was acquired by Canadian diplomat and academic Terence MacDermot from Preller’s 1952 exhibition at the Gainsborough Gallery, Johannesburg, during MacDermot’s tenure as High Commissioner for Canada to South Africa (1950–54).

Painted in 1947, J.H. Pierneef’s Bushveld Landscape with Trees (estimate R1.5 – 2 million / $90 975 – 121 300) is an iconic, monumental scene depicting the artist’s beloved savannah landscapes north of Pretoria, a place of enthusiastic retreat and creative renewal. This unmistakable trophy Pierneef leads a bountiful consignment encompassing bushveld scenes and mountain vistas in oil, watercolour and pencil, including Hartjie van die Bosveld, Potgietersrust (Transvaal) (estimate R1 – 1.5 million / $60 650 – 90 975), a mixed-media study from 1924 for a larger oil painting.

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Weekend Walkabouts:

Sunday, 24 May 2026