Notes

‘In Portrait of an African Woman (1941) a young Pondo woman is depicted, semi-nude, adorned only with beadwork and scarification marks. However seductive the colour and facture of the image, the body is the subject of the work, not the formal values. The woman is on display as ‘natural’ woman, her breast prominent and her cultural origins signified by artefacts. The background is neutral and the woman herself stands as ‘nature’. In contrast, African Woman (1940) lot 324 – similar in pose and rendered in equally robust brushwork and attractive colour – speaks of a very different social reality. The clothed woman is portrayed in an interior setting. The curtailment of her freedom is signified by the barred window and her encounter with western civilisation is apparent in her dress and headscarf. The difference between the two women – the one nude, the other clothed – is the result of acculturation and historical forces operating on their lives. These are discernible visually in the lifestyles recorded by Stern. Many of Stern’s paintings of people from other cultures are concerned primarily with the culture rather than the individual. The essence of the person studied becomes a generalisation for the society because, although the painting is created from contact with particular models, Stern interprets according to a mental construct about the culture of origin. Thus, many of her portraits are ambivalent, possessing both stereotypical and individual characteristics.’

Marion Arnold (1995) Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye. Cape Town: Fernwood Press, pages 101–102.

Exhibited

Adler Fielding Gallery, Johannesburg, November 1961.

Literature

Marion Arnold (1995) Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye, Stellenbosch: Rembrandt van Rijn Art Foundation, illustrated in colour on page 110.

Adler Fielding Gallery, Johannesburg, November 1961, listed in catalogue as 'Indian Group' and numbered 24.