Notes

Irma Stern Portfolio from the Permanent Collection of the Irma Stern Museum. This portfolio, published by The Graphic Guild, Cape Town, contains a title page, with text written by Neville Dubow, and 5 full-colour reproductions of Irma Stern artworks: Arab Youth (1945); Reclining Nude (1948); Head of a Young Girl (1930); Women in a Market (1955); and Woman with Flowers (1944), in a folder with the title blind-embossed on the front.

The text on the title page reads: "By general agreement, Irma Stern is considered one of the most important of the pioneer artists in South Africa and the country's major painter. She was born in 1894 in Schweizer-Reneke in the Transvaal and received her formative art education in Germany. Throughout the 1920s she was active and travelled and exhibited in Germany and France, where her works were received with great critical acclaim. It took some time before her genius was recognised in her native land, however. After years of struggle against philistinism she won herself a local audience. By the beginning of the decade of the 1940s her reputation was firmly established. Three of the works reproduced here are drawn from the period of the 1940s.

The Zanzibar 'Arab Youth' (gouache); the resplendent 'Reclining Nude' (gouache) and the 'Woman with Flowers' (gouache) – loosely painted in a way that anticipates her later style, which is exemplified by 'Women in a Market' (gouache). The decade of the 1940s produced some of her finest, boldest and most confident works. Inspired by her travels abroad and particularly by her visits to the Congo, Zanzibar and Central Africa between 1942 and 1946, she developed the rich and confident style of which these works are excellent examples. Throughout her working life, Irma was drawn to themes of abundance, richness, colour and exuberance. The works selected for this portfolio all show these characteristics.

Among the many misconceptions about her stye is the belief that Irma was not a draughtsman. Her works give ample evidence that this is a false view. The 'Head of a Young Girl' (pencil and wash), a comparatively early work, is an excellent example of sympathetic drawing. At her best , she was a master of controlled line and her use of colour as an element in its own right contributed strongly towards the formal basis of her pictures. The technique of these works is mainly gouache, a water-soluble medium which is worked relatively quickly and easily, allowing an immediate expressive response to the artist's pictorial imagination or, rather, pictorial impulse. These works were not meant as sketches or preparatory studies, but were intended to be seen and enjoyed in their own right. It is hoped that this portfolio will make Irma Stern's work accessible to a wider audience, in this spirit of enjoyment.

The originals of these works are part of the permanent collection of the Irma Stern Museum. The Museum is housed in Irma's Cape Town house, The Firs, on the corner of Chapel and Cecil roads, Rosebank. This house was for four decades the focal point in her life. In it she painted, lived and entertained and to it she brought collections of artworks and artifacts culled from her extensive travels in Africa and abroad. The Irma Stern Museum was inaugurated in 1971 and is administered on behalf of her Estate by the University of Cape Town."

Neville Dubow, Professor of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, Director of the Irma Stern Museum

Literature

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