Strauss & Co is pleased to introduce Fibre & Form, a refreshed evolution of the Woven Legacies auction, celebrating Africa’s vibrant woven traditions alongside the sculptural beauty of personal objects. This sale highlights the continent’s rich cultural heritage while embracing a renewed appreciation for tactile arts. It also invites a reconsideration of Western notions of
Strauss & Co established a new South African wine-auction record when a rare vertical tracking three decades of Kanonkop’s Paul Sauer, South Africa’s most iconic red wine, sold to an online bidder for R546 240 at the start of its three-day virtual auction. The exceptional offering of 19 large-format bottles of Kanonkop’s signature Bordeaux-style wine attracted considerable interest and eventually sold for double the pre-sale estimate.
David joked that one day I would have to sell his extensive wine collection, catalogued on a humungous spreadsheet with all the information you could ever imagine. His lifelong passion for wine from all corners of the world, and his generosity, helped develop a culture of fine wine in South Africa and beyond. With sadness,
The emergence of a new class of younger collectors coupled with a strong showing by auction favourites J. H. Pierneef and Irma Stern enabled Strauss & Co to achieve solid results from its three-day live sale of South African fine wine and Modern, Post-War and Contemporary art. The sale was live-streamed from Strauss & Co’s offices in Johannesburg and Cape Town to an international audience and it attracted a large cohort of online and telephone bidders. The sale, which concluded on Tuesday evening with Session 5, earned a total of R66.9 million with a satisfying lot sell-through rate of close to 80%.
As is tradition, Strauss & Co, Africa’s premier auction house, opens its annual programme with curated auctions, free exhibitions and public talks aligned to the energy and focus of February in Cape Town. Central to this programme and coinciding with the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, the leading international art fair on the African continent,
Strauss & Co is pleased to announce details for North/South, an exciting weeklong virtual sale of art, fine wine and decorative arts due to be held over five consecutive days from 8–12 November 2020.
Over many years, the Cape Town art collector Georgina Jaffee has assembled an unusually focused and expansive collection of contemporary art guided by a singular conceptual premise: hair as subject, material and metaphor. Spanning painting, photography, sculpture, textile works and even hybrid installations, and uniquely also foregrounding African and Afro-descendant perspectives, the collection is distinguished
Strauss & Co’s forthcoming auction of modern, post-war and contemporary art, decorative arts and fine wine (27 August – 7 September) coincides with a felicitous change in mood signalled by the easing of lockdown restrictions, imminent arrival of spring and launch of the 2020 edition of the RMB Turbine Art Fair. Art highlights from this online-only auction include works by auction evergreens Walter Battiss, Peter Clarke, William Kentridge, Nelson Makamo, J.H. Pierneef and Mmakgabo Helen Sebidi.
The culmination of Strauss & Co’s February energetic programme of auctions, exhibitions and talks, the live-virtual sale Portway to Cohen: A Collector’s Legacy and Other Properties (21 February 2026 at 6pm) brings together a focused selection of contemporary South African painting assembled by a discerning worldly collector, complemented by works from other properties. The sale
Time-honoured customs may have been upended by a global pandemic, but Strauss & Co is once again participating in the annual RMB Turbine Art Fair with a vigorous programme of contributions to this year’s virtual edition. These contributions include a talk by Strauss & Co chairperson Frank Kilbourn and two-person exhibition devoted to Gladys Mgudlandlu and Maggie Laubser.
