Notes

Alexis Preller’s interest in the majestic Mapogga women of the southern Ndebele people began in the December of 1935 after he returned from a year at the Westminster School of Art in London. The twenty-four-year-old Preller came across a group of women labourers in their dazzling attire on the northern outskirts of Pretoria and he was captivated. His first painting to include these Ndebele figures was Native Study (Mapogges) [sic] and was exhibited at the Empire Exhibition at Milner Park in Johannesburg from September 1936. The Mapogga women seemed to embody an archaic and distinctly African spirit and Preller monumentalised their imposing presence, dignity, unique form of dress and splendidly decorated villages.¹

The current lot, Preller’s 1955 rendition of a Mapogga woman, Red Blanket, is of such significance that Esmé Berman and Karel Nel devoted four pages to this outstanding painting in their seminal two volume publication on the artist.

They describe the work as follows:

‘This is an unusual work. Few paintings in Preller’s figurative oeuvre are as hard-edged in form and as abstract in construction. And, despite its African imagery, it tends to bring to mind certain examples of traditional Japanese blockprints, a resemblance suggested by the precisely defined pictorial elements, each isolated in negative space; by the tilted, almost vertical, foreground, the shifting perspective lines, the flat, contrasting colour planes and that emphatic scarlet shape that grabs the eye.

The source of the image can be discerned in Preller’s previous paintings of Mapogga kraals. We may recognise the figure’s prototype in the central kneeling woman in Mapogga Women
(1950), and the characteristic nature of the pose and context is clearly illustrated in the accompanying photograph by Constance Stuart. But the familiar figure has undergone a startling transformation and the meaning of this manifestation is not immediately apparent.

It seems that, once again, Preller’s imagination was stimulated by illustrations in the book, African Folktales and Sculpture. On adjoining pages in that publication are photographs of two iconic funerary figures from Gabon. They are dissimilar, but both are severely conventionalised and both are of wood covered with strips of copper. The head and shoulders of Red Figure are
undoubtedly a composite image, derived from the two artefacts.

So, she kneels, perfectly centralised in the bare abstract space; a strange figure cloaked in a scarlet blanket, less a conceptualised image of a living presence than a figurative realisation of a funerary artefact, ceremonially clad and posed. Were it not for the lower section that reveals the beaded apron and relatively naturalistic hands, that striking red blanket could be regarded as no more than the symbolic wrapping of the ritual sculpture – in the manner of the woven basketry seen in the Bakota illustration.

The painted form commands attention, primarily by virtue of its brilliant colour – the vibrant red contrasting with the intense peacock blue of the skirt. Then that surprising abstract head arrests the eye, and the viewer’s mind is taunted by the tension between the factual and the fabricated features of the figure. The dramatic impact is reinforced by the sharp definition of the red form and dark mat against the luminous surrounding space. The spare and carefully selected elements that complete the scene are essential to the effectiveness of this composition. Together, they contain the narrative and they create a sense of air within the pale, unmodulated flatness that surrounds them.

With The Last of the Mapogga in mind, this dignified, impressive work could be perceived as a kind of epitaph, each element performing a distinctive symbolic function. Central to the concept is the ‘Unknown Mapogga’, part stylised personage, part funerary figure, in traditional attire, with blanket, beaded piphetu and leather purse. She represents Preller’s conceptual Mapogga tribe.

The woven mat may also fill a ritual role – possibly similar to the prayer rug in Islamic culture. Alongside the figure is a gourd-like container, casting a foreshortened shadow. The vessel may hold beer, often associated with the ancestors, or life-giving water to sustain the departed spirit. On the wall opposite, that recurrent Preller emblem – the banana-flower/maize cob – refers perhaps to the agrarian Mapogga culture. In the open space beyond are typical wooden food platters and, in the background, a fragmentary view of a Ndebele house.

The painting is distinguished by a classic strength of structure and adorned by a serenity of mood that endows it with significance that overrides its unpretentious title’.¹

^1. Esmé Berman and Karel Nel (2009) Africa, the Sun and Shadows, Volume II, Collected Images, Johannesburg: Shelf Publishing, pages 154–157

Provenance

Gallery 101, Johannesburg.

Stephen Welz & Co in Association with Sotheby's, Johannesburg, 20 October 2003, lot 315.

Private Collection.

Literature

Esmé Berman, Alan Crump, Vittorino Meneghelli, Karel Nel, Monty Sack, Karin Skawran and Amalie von Maltitz (2005) Villa at 90: His Life, Work and Influence, Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishing and Shelf Publishing, illustrated in colour on page 130 with the title 'Preller's Seated African'.

Esmé Berman and Karel Nel (2009) Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows, Johannesburg: Shelf Publishing, illustrated in colour on page 182 with the title 'Red Figure'.

Esmé Berman and Karel Nel (2009) Alexis Preller: Collected Images, Johannesburg: Shelf Publishing, illustrated in black and white on page 94 and in colour on page 154.