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,
Leading auction house Strauss & Co is privileged to be offering the entire contents of Harcroft House – an imposing 64-roomed Arts and Crafts mansion in the heart of Constantia in Cape Town. The 558-lot auction will take place in situ on Monday 18 November and will be preceded by three days of public viewing, from Friday 15 to Sunday 17 November.
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 ended its 2019 programme of live sales on a confident note when the contents of Harcroft House, a distinguished Cape manor home in Constantia, was sold. The highest earner among the 558 lots on offer was a Chinese early Republican period, four-panel scroll painting depicting birds in flowering trees, which sold for R432 440, more than four times the estimate.
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
Bag Factory Artists’ Studios, in partnership with Strauss Education and Kalashnikovv Gallery is proud to announce Duduzile (DuduBloom) More as the winner of the prestigious Cassirer Welz Award. Now in its ninth year, the award honours two doyens of art auctioneering in South Africa: Reinhold Cassirer and Stephan Welz. We would also once again like to congratulate the other three finalists for this year’s Cassirer Welz Award: Boitumelo Motau, Khotso Motsoeneng and Thebe Phetogo. Duduzile was announced as the winner of the award on 25 November at Strauss & Co in Johannesburg.
Strauss & Co, in partnership with Brickfield Canvas, is honoured to present Faces of Cape Town: Portraits by Irma Stern, a capsule exhibition opening on 14 February. Showcasing a selection of portraits drawn from the Irma Stern Trust Collection, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to encounter Stern’s deeply human depictions of the people who
A new wave of internationally celebrated South African artists, among them Nicholas Hlobo, Athi-Patra Ruga and Simphiwe Ndzube, lead Strauss & Co’s much-anticipated Contemporary Art auction, due to be held in Cape Town on 15 February. Now in its third year, this benchmark annual sale coincides with the Investec Cape Town Art Fair and will feature 102 carefully vetted lots, among them a consignment of pan-African works from a South African collector.
When Frank Kilbourn sits down with Gerhard Marx, festival artist of the Stellenbosch Woordfees 2020, for a pleasant public heart-to-heart, the audience will quickly get that the executive chairperson of Strauss & Co has a solid hand on and a passion for the convoluted, but exciting, territory of contemporary art.
Strauss & Co achieved total sales of R475.5m / $28 million from 6,927 lots sold through the various sales channels in 2025, an increase of 26% over 2024. The figure includes 83 non-charity, revenue-generating auctions and private sales. International engagement remained a priority, with focused marketing activities in Europe and the UK and a highly successful inaugural auction in Kenya, extending the company’s regional footprint. Strauss & Co continued to grow
