Hallelujah Chorus

Provenance

The Graham Flax Collection.

Private Collection.

Notes

Robert Hodgins’s restrained composition demonstrates his remarkable ability to achieve considerable emotional and visual impact with a limited palette. The present lot features a stylised human figure set against an abstract background. The setting is deliberately unremarkable.

Hodgins often allowed his figures and motifs to develop through an intuitive accumulation of marks and colour. His recurring cast of characters includes businessmen, military officers, boxers, and domestic figures. His admiration for Philip Guston was deeply influential in this regard, particularly Guston’s simplified forms, cartoon-like imagery, and darkly comic sensibility.¹

With strong provenance linked to the prominent Graham Flax Collection which previously included Hodgins's The Witch in Her Domain (1995/7) (fig 1), sold by Strauss & Co, this work holds deep personal significance. The reverse is inscribed by the artist, reading: "for Graham Flax with love + respect," marking it as a cherished artwork from Robert Hodgins to his friend

^1. Kathryn Smith (2012) 'Some General Rules: Robert Hodgins in Conversation with Kathryn Smith', in A Lasting Impression: The Robert Hodgins Print Archive, Johannesburg, Wits University Press, page 117.