Artists

From Albert Adams to Portia Zvavahera, Strauss & Co maintains a detailed database of every artist sold at auction since 2009. Whether it is painting, sculpture, works on paper, photography, ceramics or new media, this searchable database lists by artist every lot offered and provides aggregated data useful to collectors. Famous South African artists like William Kentridge, JH Pierneef, Alexis Preller and Irma Stern are introduced with helpful biographies along with the best contemporary artists.



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Derek Leigh

South African 1940-1993 


Derek Leigh studied under the British modernist Jack Heath at the University of Natal in Pietermaritzburg between 1959 and 1962. His rounded training there was characterised by a strict emphasis on drawing, design, sound technique and art history. Later, in Paris, with his sister Valerie and his soon-to-be-wife, Leonora Everard Haden (daughter of Ruth Everard Haden), he fell under the sway of André Lhôte, as did so many other talented, impressionable young artists. It comes as little surprise then that his developing style, particularly in its approach to the landscape, borrowed from Lhôte’s tonal key, formal solidity, and Fauvist colour palette. After a stint teaching art at Luanshya High School in Zambia in 1966, Leigh spent a year painting at Bonnefoi, his wife’s now famous family farm in the then Eastern Transvaal. While already committed to a gently geometric and bright brand of neo-impressionism, his work at Bonnefoi could not have escaped the influence of Bertha Everard and Edith King, while he might also have found in Ruth Everard Haden’s sinuous horizon lines, quilted landscapes and rich, ravishing colour combinations a beautiful, convincing template. Leigh became a senior lecturer at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Pietermaritzburg) in the Fine Art and History of Art Department where he taught for 23 years.


3 lots offered      66.67% sold      ZAR 124 525
 

  Including Premium and VAT Results include Buyer's Premium and VAT
Derek Leigh; Study for the Judgement of Paris
22 Feb 2021
Sold for ZAR 16 415
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Derek Leigh; Eastern Transvaal Landscape
4 Jun 2018
Sold for ZAR 108 110
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
Derek Leigh; Study for The Arrival of Jan van Riebeeck in the Pietermaritzburg City Hall,1952
5 Jun 2017
ZAR 8 000 - 12 000