Notes

Highly sought after by collectors, the present lot is a rare example of the calligraphic style of painting Walter Battiss employed only twice in his artistic career: in the late-1950s and again in the mid-1960s. Battiss developed this style of painting as a direct result of his research into Southern African rock art, particularly the petroglyphs in the Douglas area of the Northern Cape, which he considered to constitute a type of rock language. He included images of these petroglyphs in his book, The Art of Africa (1958), and they formed the basis, together with Southern Arabic, of the Fook alphabet he developed in the late 1960s. When a similar work by Battiss from this period was exhibited in The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany in 1958, alongside other works by Higgs, Jentsch, Laubser, Pierneef, Preller, Stern and Welz, the German art critic, Lore Schatten, singled out Battiss's work as being entirely 'rooted in the culture of his native country' and 'indissolubly bound up with his studies of the South African cave paintings'.¹ Similar examples to the present work are in such prominent public collections as those held at Unisa and the Pretoria Art Museum.

¹ Murray Schoonraad, Walter Battiss, Struik Publications, 1974, p 18.

Provenance

Bought by the current owner's father-in-law who acquired it directly from the artist.

Exhibited

Matseke Art Collection, University of South Africa, 2000