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 inscribed with the title on the reverse
Notes
The present lot revisits a compositional structure and colour palette familiar from Helmut Starcke's earlier screenprints, particularly those depicting layered haystacks beneath radiant skies. Here, a central square of lush, texturally rich grassland is inset within a pristine skyscape of white clouds against a brilliant blue backdrop. The grassy insert feels lifted directly from life, in contrast to the stylised, almost hyperreal sky that surrounds it. As in much of Starcke's work, narrative gives way to a meditative interplay of form, colour and surface. The result is a space of quiet tension, where framing renders the familiar uncanny and landscape becomes a conduit for memory and abstraction.
Helmut Starke was born in West Germany in 1935. He completed an apprenticeship at the Werbekunst Publicity Studio, Frankfurt and went on to work as a graphic designer for J Walter Thompson, Frankfurt. Starke then moved to Cape Town to work at P N Barrett Advertising and Lindsay Smithers (Cape) Pty Advertising. In 1973, he was appointed as a full-time lecturer in Graphic Design at the University of Cape Town's Michaelis School of Fine Art. Starke participated in numerous solo and group shows; most notably in the 1964 and 1966 Venice Biennale and the 1963 Sao Paolo Biennale.
Starke often used his art to critique social and political issues, drawing inspiration from Pop Art-particularly artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein-as well as from Photorealism and Surrealism. He experimented with visual ambiguities by merging two environments within a single picture plane and manipulating light and colour to transcend the objectivity of the photographic source images.
Provenance
The Engen Collection.
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