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William Kentridge is one of South Africas most globally renowned artists but unique works such as this seldom come up at auction. Its bold colour, its powerful form and its substantial size give this early mixed media work its great impact. Within the drawn contours of a supine head, a map of Africa in a coral colour appears to be riven with golden seams where the paper has been carefully torn.

This large reclining male figure has its origin in Ubu Tells the Truth, a portfolio of 8 etchings produced in 1996-7 and the theatre production Ubu & the Truth Commission, which premiered in Weimar, Germany, launching an international tour that culminated in 1998 at Spier in Stellenbosch.

Born to a Jewish family in Durban, Vivienne Linder, nee Adley was educated at the Maris Stella Convent before continuing her singing and drama training at the University of Natal Durban, where she spent the next three years under the watchful eye of Elizabeth Sneddon. In 1957, having completed her degree, she continued at the Webber-Douglas School of Singing and Dramatic Art in London, where she was one of the debutantes presented to the Queen at Buckingham Palace in the summer of 1958.

Erik Laubscher studied under Maurice van Essche at the Continental School of Art in Cape Town in 1946 and 1947. His studies at the Anglo-French Art Centre in London in the following two years exposed him to respected artists who were pushing the boundaries of modernist art, but it was the period he spent in Paris at the Acadmie Montmartre, from 1950 to 1951 under Fernand Lger, which had the greatest impact on the development of his painting style. Both favoured bright primary colours and strong lines that defined forms or even operated quite independently of form.

Strauss & Co is delighted to have been entrusted with the sale of the contents of Keerweder the handsome Cape Dutch homestead on one of the oldest farms in Franschhoek, situated at the foot of the Franschhoek mountains against a backdrop of orchards, rolling vines and English rose gardens.

Stanley Pinker lived between London and Nice from 1952 until 1964 when he returned to Cape Town. ‘The Dam at Eenzaamheid’, Longkloof would have been produced relatively soon after his return. Interestingly it bears a strong resemblance to the Romantic landscapes favoured by early twentieth-century British landscape painters such as Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Paul Nash with their predilection for autumnal tones, organic forms, scarred earth and occasional architectural ruins, employing Surrealist overtones or Gothic drama to evoke post-war experiences.

Edoardo Villa is one of South Africa’s most enigmatic sculptors who, in both in style and personality, indelibly stamped his African Vision onto his works and into our consciousness over a period of more than 50 years. The thirteen Villas in the Strauss & Co. upcoming sale are remarkable in that they represent a range of stylistic diversity and evolution not usually seen except in a specifically curated exhibition.

Spring Auction in Johannesburg, Monday 7 September 2009, Important British, Continental and South African Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture, Country Club, Johannesburg, Woodmead

A highly important mid-18th century Cape coromandel buffet with silver mounts by Johannes Casparus Lotter is to be offered for sale by Strauss & Co. in their inaugural Cape Town auction on 8 October 2009.

Johannesburg: Strauss & Co’s auction held this week at the Johannesburg Country Club in Woodmead confirms certain strengths in the art market and that South Africa is the place to buy South African art.