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 and dated '83
Notes
Kevin Atkinson was a South African artist and educator born in Cape Town in 1939. He studied at the University of Cape Town's Michaelis School of Fine Art where he obtained a BA in Fine Art in 1978. For 30 years he taught at his alma mater, occupying a light and airy studio on the upper floor. After his retirement in 1996, Atkinson created an underground studio for himself, which he named 'Plato's Cave' after the allegorical cave described in Plato's The Republic. Though well known as a printmaker and painter, throughout his career Atkinson was experimental in both his medium and style - embracing conceptual art, Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism and others. He is often described as being 'before his time' and was, therefore, thought of as controversial and enigmatic. Atkinson exhibited widely throughout his lifetime in solo and group shows both locally and internationally. In the 70s and 80s, he also received a number of commissions for public murals and light installations. Before his death in 2007, Atkinson set up a Trust to preserve his Plato's Cave studio as a place to make his art accessible to students, curators and the public.
Provenance
The Engen Collection.
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