Modern, Post-War and Contemporary Art and South African Fine Wine

Live Virtual Auction, 26 - 28 July 2020

Tuesday Evening Sale
  • Cecil Skotnes; Visit to a Battle Site
  • Cecil Skotnes; Visit to a Battle Site
  • Cecil Skotnes; Visit to a Battle Site
  • Cecil Skotnes; Visit to a Battle Site
  • Cecil Skotnes; Visit to a Battle Site
  • Cecil Skotnes; Visit to a Battle Site


Lot Estimate
ZAR 600 000 - 900 000

About this Item

South African 1926-2009
Visit to a Battle Site

signed; dated December 1974 and inscribed 'Series: Paintings on a Visit to a Battle Site' on the reverse

oil on canvas laid down on wood panel with painted and incised found wood
122 by 122cm excluding frame; 125 by 125 by 5cm including frame

Notes

‘I attempted to create the silences …The battle site was Isandhlwana in Natal, but it could have been any monument to man's folly. After all, I have strode over battlefields when the smoke was still all-embracing and the roar of guns was still in my ears [Skotnes served in the South African Artillery in Egypt and Italy during WWI] … After great noise the silence is almost unbearable – it is the mind and spirit summing up the causes of the cataclysm, and those who pause to understand usually never survive. They are the spirits of reason, and our times, while taking cognisance of reasons, never indulge in reason. The creative souls can and usually do quickly sense the times and are usually first to set down their reactions. Also, at the moment of conception there is no fear. Those figures on the battle site are not the ghosts of dead men – they are the understanding of what is to occur or the wilderness created by storm … The silence of the battle site lets the spirits live again.’1

1. Skotnes, as quoted in Harmsen (1996), page 37.

Provenance

Bonhams, London, 24 March 2010, lot 99.

Literature

cf. Frieda Harmsen (1996) Cecil Skotnes, exhibition catalogue, Cape Town: South African National Gallery, other works from the series illustrated.

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