Modern and Contemporary Art from Africa

Timed Online Auction, 13 - 28 February 2023

Modern and Contemporary Art from Africa
About the Session

Including Property of Collectors and The Harry Kantor Collection.

Harry Kantor (1934-2019), a Capetonian, moved to Harare in the late 1950s. He supported local art institutions such as the National Gallery of Zimbabwe and Gallery Delta, serving as Chairman of both institutions. He promoted Zimbabwe's artists globally and amassed over 300 works, including European and indigenous African painters, Victorian and Chinese pieces. His collection includes significant roots of early Zimbabwean painting. Five paintings from his collection are on display at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Arts' exhibition "When We See Us", featuring African figurative art.

Lots 51-62 can be viewed on our current Timed Online Auction, and lot 75 in our Curatorial Voices Auction, both taking place on the 28th of February.


Sold for

ZAR 42 210
Lot 50
  • Mikhael Subotzky; Shackles, Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison (from the Die Vier Hoeke series)
  • Mikhael Subotzky; Shackles, Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison (from the Die Vier Hoeke series)
  • Mikhael Subotzky; Shackles, Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison (from the Die Vier Hoeke series)


Lot Estimate
ZAR 40 000 - 60 000
Selling Price
Incl. Buyer's Premium & VAT
ZAR 42 210

About this Item

South African 1981-
Shackles, Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison (from the Die Vier Hoeke series)

signed, dated 2009, and numbered 9/9 in pencil in the margin

inkjet print on cotton rag paper
image size: 46,5 by 70cm; sheet size: 56 by 78cm; 71 by 93,5 by 3,5cm including frame

Notes

Accompanied by a Goodman Gallery certificate of authenticity.

Another example from the edition is in The Walther Collection, Germany.

Mikhael Subotzky is a Cape Town-born, Johannesburg-based multi-media artist who works in photography, film, installation, collage, and painting. His art is concerned with storytelling; critically engaging with narrative and representation. Subotzky graduated from the University of Cape Town’s Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2004, where he acted as a part-time lecturer in photography from 2004 to 2006. Between 2005 and 2008, he developed and ran a photographic workshop inside Pollsmoor Prison, Cape Town, and this is where his early career was founded: on photographic projects that explored incarceration and punishment in South Africa.

In 2012, Subotzky was named the Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year for Visual Arts and Okwui Enwezor chose to include his work in the 2015 Venice Biennale. He has been widely exhibited both locally and internationally including the solo exhibition Epilogue at Goodman Gallery, London, UK (2022) and recent group exhibitions Global(e) Resistance at the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2021); Masculinities: Liberation through Photography at the Barbican, London, UK (2020); and Inheritance: Recent Video Art from Africa at the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), USA (2019). He also collaborated with Patrick Waterhouse on a multi-year series, Ponte City, which was presented at Art Basel Unlimited in 2018 and acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), CA, USA.

In addition to SFMOMA, Subotzky’s photographs can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York City, NY, USA; the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, USA; the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France; the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town; the Johannesburg Art Museum; and in Sir Elton John’s private photography collection.

Provenance

Private Collection, Cape Town.

Exhibited

Nelson Mandela Cell at Pollsmoor Prison, Cape Town, Die Vier Hoeke, 2005, another example from the edition exhibited.

Constitutional Hill, Johannesburg, Die Vier Hoeke, 2006, another example from the edition exhibited.

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Die Vier Hoeke and Umjiegwana, 2006, another example from the edition exhibited.

View all Mikhael Subotzky lots for sale in this auction



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