Notes

"Marjorie Wallace and her husband, the writer, Jan Rabie (1920-2001) had a close relationship with the artist and poet, Breyten Breytenbach, whom they had known since his student days in the sixties.  Although difficult years, they kept in contact and remained friends.  Breytenbach was a member of Okhela, a resistance group, fighting apartheid in exile.  In 1975 he undertook an illegal trip to South Africa where he was betrayed, arrested and charged with high treason.  He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in a much-published trial in the Pretoria High Court.  His book, The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist (1984), portrays his experience as a prisoner.  Wallace attended the trial and felt deeply for what she believed Breytenbach had to endure during interrogation by the security police.  In these dark gouaches, which she created in her studio, she portrays how she had identified herself with his painful experience.  She had only once shown the work at an exhibition in Pretoria in 2003.  She later made a similar work, showing her empathy with the activist, Steve Biko, during his interrogations".    Amanda Botha, 2013.

Provenance

Stephan Welz & Co, Cape Town, 19 February 2013, lot 696.

Literature

Amanda Botha (2006) Marjorie Wallace - Drif en Vreugde, Cape Town: New Africa Books. Illustrated on pages 121 and 122.