Notes

Still Life with Coffee Pot was made in the last decade of Cecil Skotnes’ life. It represents one of the few themes he consistently returned to. Skotnes would often set up an easel and paint a still life in the interval between projects, or after the launch of a solo exhibition. This offered him a time of reflection, and his still lives were tributes to some of the artists he saw as his creative ancestors. Cézanne was the high priest amongst these, but he was also deeply moved by the images of a simple breakfast left on a table or the frescos of fruit in glass bowls on the walls of the ruined Pompeii. The blue that floods the background of this still life has yet another lineage. It remembers Lucca della Robia’s dome under the portico of the Pazzi Chapel, and his luminous glazed terracottas that populate the city of his heart: Florence. These recalled for him the magical time at the end of World War ll when he helped remove the protective packing of the great artworks of the public squares and decided to become an artist.

—Pippa Skotnes, 2022

Provenance

Strauss & Co, Cape Town, 8 October 2012, lot 505.

Private Collection.