The Engen Collection
Live Virtual Auction, 24 June 2025
The Engen Collection
About the SessionThe Engen Collection is a corporate collection that highlights a crucial chapter in South African art history.
Initially put together as the Mobil collection in the early 1980s, it brings to market a selection of works from a broader archive of over two hundred artworks, offering insights into the networks, pedagogies and creative resistances that shaped South African abstract art in the early 1980s. It comprises of paintings, tapestries, works on paper and photographs representing a significant corporate investment in South African contemporary art during a period of intense cultural and political transformation. The collection engages with a moment when South African artists were developing visual languages that could operate across the cultural and artistic boundaries. These artists, including Bill Ainslie, Simon Stone, Gabriel Tsolo, Judith Mason, Andrew Verster, Pippa Skotnes and Gail Altschuler, documented individual artistic development alongside the collective creation of alternative artistic practice.
The collection traces the intellectual and artistic genealogy of artists working within and against the constraints of the 80s, many of whom were influenced by the South African artist, teacher and activist Bill Ainslie and the Johannesburg Art Foundation (JAF), an institution that maintained inclusivity. Founded in 1982, JAF operated as an educational anomaly, rejecting prescribed curricula and external authority in favour of emancipatory and experimental pedagogy. Under Ainslie's direction, the Foundation fostered abstract expressionism, an art movement whose rejection of traditional representational art prioritised non-objective imagery to evoke emotion. The connections of the institution extended beyond the JAF itself, linking to the establishment of Federated Union of Black Artists (FUBA) and the Thupelo Workshops in Cape Town, institutions whose impact continues to shape contemporary South African art discourse.
The CEO, Mr George Roberts, said: "The Engen Collection represents a broad and vibrant range of South African artists and has been a treasured part of our company’s story for many years. As we look to the future, we believe it is time for these remarkable artworks to find new homes where they can continue to be appreciated, shared and celebrated. We believe that by releasing this collection, the artworks will find new life amongst a wider community, while inspiring new audiences by continuing to tell the story of South Africa’s creative spirit."
About this Item
signed; signed, dated 1983 and inscribed with the title on the stretcher
Literature
R J Angel (no date) Mobil Court Art Collection: A Collection of South African Visual Art, Mobil Oil Southern Africa, illustrated in colour, unpaginated.
Notes
Fence, painted in 1983, is another large-scale work that operates in a visually similar manner to Keeping an Ear to the Ground. In both, gesture, colour and line converge to create a charged and dynamic composition. In the present lot, the entire surface of the canvas is covered and saturated in lively colour with secondary hues.
Stadler makes particular use of contrasting complementary colours, laid down in energised swathes, which she overlays and interplays with loops, patterns and gestural marks reminiscent of American artist Cy Twombly's (1928-2011) distinctive calligraphic style. These linear elements, combined with the warm and vibrant palette, imbue the work with an explosive energy.
While Stadler is influenced primarily by the American Abstract Expressionists, the impact of fellow South African artists - such as Kevin Atkinson, Bill Ainslie, Simon Stone and Andrew Verster - can also be discerned.
Jenny Stadler was born in Johannesburg in 1938 and studied Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand, the Johannesburg Technikon, and furthered her education in Brighton and London. She has taught at both the Johannesburg Art Foundation and the University of the Witwatersrand, contributing significantly to the local art community.
Renowned for her bold use of colour and dynamic compositions, Stadler's expressionistic work explores the depth of human emotion and its relationship to the surrounding world. Her paintings often incorporate nostalgic ephemera - such as Chappies bubblegum wrappers and Lion matchstick boxes - blending memory and material culture with painterly intensity. Her distinctive impasto technique and energetic style make her work immediately recognisable.
Provenance
The Engen Collection.
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