Notes

In a brief essay included in the catalogue accompanying Alexis Preller’s retrospective exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum in 1972, art historian Esmé Berman wrote: “It is essential to the full appreciation of Preller’s art to accept and understand the process of repetition, adaptation, variation and transformation which has governed its development.”¹ This work, which appeared on the cover of the catalogue, clarifies her statement. Following a research trip to Greece and Turkey in 1968, Preller worked on an extended cycle of paintings in which the dominant motif was the naked male torso. His figures directly quote the kouros, an early Grecian sculptural type depicting an unclothed male figure. Used as both grave markers and idols, these highly stylised figures were referred to as Apollos, in reference to the Greek god fabled for his beauty.² Preller initially rendered his classical motif on flat surfaces, as lavishly painted icons.

In 1969, though, he began to experiment, pushing himself to think beyond painting on canvas as a way of rendering his cycle of figure studies. He devised a method that firstly involved modelling a scene in clay and then creating a fibre-glass cast. Preller used the negative cast as his substrate, applying his paint treatment to the inside surface of the mould. He named the process “intaglio”. In a letter he described his three-dimensional works as “part sculpture and part painting”.³ His chief ambition with this new work was to explore form and model light. He did not view his kouroi-inspired forms as “necessarily Greek”.⁴ For Preller they were more essential: they were descriptive of both mythical sources of origin and the rudiments of figurative art. The first examples of Preller’s sculpted paintings were successfully exhibited at the Henry Lidchi Gallery in late 1969. This later work, produced shortly before his comprehensive career survey, is one of two well-known works sharing the same title.

^1. Berman, Esmé. (1972) Alexis Preller, Pretoria: Pretoria Art Museum. Page 1
^2. Percy, William Armstrong. (1996) Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece, Champaign: University of Illinois. Page 115
^3. Berman, Esmé. (2009) Alexis Preller: Africa, the Sun and Shadows, Johannesburg: Shelf Publishing. Page 280
^4. Ibid., page 285

Exhibited

Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, Alexis Preller Retrospective, 24 October to 26 November 1972, catalogue number 186, illustrated (unpaginated)

Literature

Pretoria Art Museum, Alexis Preller Retrospective exhibition catalogue, cover image