Strauss & Co once again brings significant collection to market in March

5 Mar 2026

Strauss & Co sets out its stall as the premium destination for fine art sales in South Africa as the company continues with an exciting curatorial programme and a roster of monthly online sales which offer buyers truly collectable art at accessible price points.

Each set of sales in a packed programme for 2026 has a particular focus, either thematically or from a collecting point of view. The March sales are no different, led by an exciting and culturally significant sale called Spirit and Substance. This special sale is drawn from the Estate of the Late Dr. Rayda Becker, the senior Art Curator at the University of the Witwatersrand, Art Galleries in Johannesburg from 1988 to 2001. During her time at Wits Art Galleries, she completed her doctoral thesis entitled Tsonga headrests: the making of an art history category, which was published in 1999. While her specific research area focused on the headrests made by Tsonga carvers, Dr. Becker developed a real affinity in her collection for objets from Limpopo Province, including figurative sculpture, medicine gourds, Nhnghuvani, carved stoppers with heads as their tops, and Tsonga beadwork.

She also formed deep friendships with some of the artists from the former Venda and Gazankulu areas, namely Jackson Hlungwani, Julius Chauke, Johannes Maswanganyi, Dr Phuthuma Seoka, Nelson Mukhuba, and Noria Mabasa, among others, and often conducted field trips to their homes for research while at Wits Art Museum. All of these artists and works are represented on the sale.

While this part of Dr. Becker’s collection forms a centrepiece of the auction, there is also significant contemporary South African art on offer, headed by the lead lot on the sale by value, a significant large diptych from the early 1980s by Robert Hodgins, another personal friend of the collector.  Oh, Oh, Oh She Cried in a Cracked Voice is a seminal diptych from a pivotal era in Hodgins’s career, exposing a South Africa in the grip of crisis. Painted between 1983 and 1984, Hodgins at this time in his work frequently drew parallels between the atrocities of apartheid and the political commentary found in the works of Francisco Goya. His visual language in this period is also deeply rooted in the imagery of Francis Bacon and William Blake.

The work is populated by figures defined by disfigurement, distortion, and the grotesque, reflecting a state of visceral panic and chaos. Hodgins employs a dramatic palette of reds, yellows, and whites—colours characteristic of his output during this turbulent decade. As noted by Dr. Becker, while Hodgins’s earlier works were often silent and contemplative, his later paintings like this one ‘scream at you’. Dr. Becker was a contributing writer to the 2002 monograph on Hodgins, in which this specific diptych was featured. Strauss & Co, in accordance with the wishes of the family, will donate a portion of the proceeds from the auction to the Dr Rayda Becker Art Scholarship Fund. This contribution will support an emerging artist in the development of their career.

The sale is specially curated by Dr. Becker’s colleague and recently retired curator at Wits Art Museum Fiona Rankin-Smith.

The ‘Art Club’ section of March ART extends the educational initiative of Strauss & Co’s regular Art Club emerging collector meetings, in this case offering a mini-showcase of works by beloved local contemporary artist Norman Catherine, across the mediums of painting, sculpture, and printmaking. From early surrealist-inspired drawings to his most iconic satirical works, this highly collectable capsule collection includes several of Catherine’s signature hand-carved and painted wood sculptures. Key examples include Smokehead (Estimate R200,000–300,000) and Hammerhead (Estimate R30,000–50,000), which use symbolic, often distorted ‘heads’ to explore themes of identity and human unease. The collection includes works from his famous collaboration with Walter Battiss, the Fook Island project. Featured lots such as Luminous Fook Mook (Estimate R5 000 – 7 000) reflect the playful, conceptual spirit of this imaginary world, which remains a cornerstone of South African conceptual art.

Elsewhere in the sale there are numerous gems for collectors, including work by Irma Stern and other key South African modernists, with a provenance from the collection of Stan and Li Boiskin, the Cape Town art patrons.

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March 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: