Provenance

The Collection of Professor Murray Schoonraad.

Literature

Warren Siebrits (ed) (2016) Walter Battiss: "I Invented Myself", exhibition catalogue, Johannesburg: The Ampersand Foundation, another impression from the edition illustrated in colour on page 121, cat. no. 1973.03.S8*.

Jillian Carman and Susan Isaac (eds) (2005) Walter Battiss: Gentle Anarchist, exhibition catalogue, Johannesburg: Standard Bank Gallery, another impression from the edition illustrated in colour on page 198.

Karin Skawran and Michael Macnamara (1985) Walter Battiss, Johannesburg: A D Donker, another impression from the edition illustrated in colour on page 101.

Notes

Battiss was a great admirer of Rudolph Steiner's work as a philosopher and the following passage from a lecture given in August 1923 describes the inspiration and message behind The Home I Inhabit. I have already said that when we raise ourselves into the Spiritual world through imagination, we are no longer in the same disposition of soul as here in our physical earthly existence, in which, for example: I stand here and the table there is outside me. There is here a physical division between myself and the table; but the moment I ascend into the Spiritual worlds, the division no longer exists. It is then no longer a case of my standing here and the table there, for my whole being would extend over the table, which would absorb me into itself. In the Spiritual world we immerse ourselves in the things we perceive.¹

¹Warren Siebrits (ed) (2016) Walter Battiss : "I Invented Myself", exhibition catalogue, Johannesburg: The Ampersand Foundation, page 121.