Notes

Thanks to a Transvaal Chamber of Mines Bursary, Margaret McKean came under the sway of Professor Heather Martienssen at the University of the Witwatersrand in the mid-1950s. She continued her training at the Académie Julian in Paris, and the Central School of Art in London. There she worked alongside the British Surrealist Merlyn Evans who, incidentally, had been an influential teacher at the Durban Art School from 1939.

The present Lot, a startling, offbeat, detonation of colour, is a fine example of the artist’s mature style, and borrows freely from Picasso or Botero’s lusty, fleshbursting bodies. It shows a racy, densely modelled and semi-nude bather, her skin touched by the sun, presumably, and turned dramatic shades of pink and plum. One might expect the hulking bather to be sinking into sand, but her weight pulls only the slightest tension across the simple white sheet. Slender turquoise masts pierce the top corners of the sheet, and give some sense of the height at which the figure is suspended. A coastline, defined by deep purple, peach and blue, runs towards the horizon, while disembodied hands appear on the margins.