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 1984
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
Ernst de Jong was born in Pretoria in 1934 and spent his school years painting. His talent in this latter pursuit led to a scholarship to attend the University of Oklahoma in the United States of America, where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and was awarded the Letzeiser prize for the best student in the faculty. He returned to South Africa in 1957 and the following year opened Ernst de Jong Studios for graphic design. Throughout his career, he lectured in graphic design and painting at the Pretoria Technikon (now Tshwane University of Technology), the University of Pretoria and the University of the Witwatersrand. From 1994 to 1998, the artist and his wife moved to Oslo, Norway, where he produced a series of works titled Passage to Norway. Known for his Abstract Suprematist Symbolic style, de Jong continued to lecture, paint and exhibit until his death in 2016.
De Jong participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in South Africa, Europe and the United States of America, notably the 1972 Venice Biennale and a Retrospective Exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum in 1994 that featured 236 works by the artist. He also completed several public commissions such as the State Theatre fire screen mural in Pretoria, developed postage stamp artwork and was the Design Director for the new South African bank notes in 1992.
Provenance
The Engen Collection.
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