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 86; inscribed with the artist's name on a label adhered to the reverse; signed, dated and inscribed with the title and medium on the reverse
Notes
David Koloane's Wedding Dance is a synthesis of bold colour and expressive gesture, in line with his approach to visual narrative and imagery. Through a subtle mix of hues, the work brings into play abstract and figurative elements in a tightly packed composition where recognisable forms dissolve into the background.
Wedding Dance highlights Koloane's working method of engaging controlled chaos through a deliberate use of spontaneous and hurried marks. Executed in his style of gestural mark-making, the painting pulses with an urgency that speaks to the Koloane's relationship with his subject matter within his practice, teasing out the human condition through images of urban life, cityscapes and, sometimes, the people and animals found wandering those same cities. He often returned to similar themes, as seen in his 2018 work titled Procession II, depicting a veiled bride alongside wedding guests, rendered in monochromatic tones.
In Wedding Dance, the mediums of acrylic and pastel lend themselves naturally to the kind of immediate, physical engagement that makes up his approach, allowing for the rapid buildup of texture and a multitude of layers and rhythm.
While more abstract than some of Koloane's later works, Wedding Dance is stylistically consistent with his drawing and painting practice, which continued until his death in 2019.
David Koloane was a pioneer black modernist artist during the South African apartheid era and played a huge role in contemporary South African art as an artist, writer, cultural critic and curator. He was a co-founder of the Thupelo workshop program and the Fordsburg Artists' Studios, famously known as The Bag Factory. In his paintings, drawings and collages he made an oblique socio-political commentary on South Africa's difficult past and the poverty experienced in townships. He is best known for his paintings and drawings of abstracted Johannesburg landscapes and the scavenger dogs he refers to as Mgodoyi. He was honoured with a retrospective exhibition that was shown at the Standard Bank Art Gallery in Johannesburg and South African National Gallery in Cape Town in 2019. He held numerous exhibitions and received many prestigious local and international awards.
Provenance
The Engen Collection.
Other lots that might interest you
