Notes

My world is made up of material. What excites me about the landscape is the material, the earth, the way the rocks are formed – the granite, the dolomite… taking these materials from the earth one feels a kind of custodianship, a stewardship. It is almost a need to sustain nature, to say thank you – an empathy between man and his world. In the same way that an alchemist used to work in medieval times – there were basic ingredients, elements of the earth, chemicals which were put together and there was a moment of magic… There is a process going on between what the earth is providing and man’s intellect. The intellect is experimenting with these elements. When one says ‘magic it is on an emotional level. Scientifically it is a very deliberate, calculated and intellectual exercise. If you have the combination of the intellect plus a bit of the unexplained – that emotional part – then you have what I am trying to do.

– Harold Voigt

Harold Voigt, born and educated in Johannesburg, moved to Schagen in Mpumalanga with his wife and fellow artist Leigh Voigt, and their two sons in 1975. Having studied architecture, Voigt compared the complex discipline of art to science, requiring the balancing of tension between elements and, while he experimented with different techniques and even mixing his own pigments, there are tried and true techniques in his work that are executed with the precision of a great understanding and familiarity. Voigt lived and worked in the mountainous lowveld region until his death in the October of 2022. The lowveld landscape became a central theme in Voigt’s work and the present lot is no exception. The indigenous scrubby winter bush is often evoked through techniques of rubbing through upper layers of paint, or using a knife’s edge to scratch and mark the surface in a subtle reference to thorny vegetation, rock and soil. The present lot is a fine example of his lion studies, which are considered some of the greatest paintings produced by the artist, the vitality and movement so well designed and represented through the dramatic interplay of light and shadow.