The Venice Connection: Strauss & Co auction features more than a dozen artists feted at the Venice Biennale since 1950

Posted on by Brooke Shafer

CAPE TOWN – The Venice Biennale, an important recurring international art exhibition that this year celebrates its sixtieth edition, has over time become a reliable benchmark for judging artist careers. The catalogue for Strauss & Co’s flagship live auction of modern and contemporary art on Tuesday, 19 March 2024 includes work by more than a dozen artists linked to this prestigious international showcase, among them Irma Stern and Zanele Muholi.

ART WORLD LEADERS: Marlene Dumas, Irma Stern & Lisa Brice this month at Strauss & Co

Posted on by Brooke Shafer

Africa is currently leading the art market in terms of gender parity on secondary sales as women artists accounted for 64% of the total of the top 30 artists sales in 2023 (up from 32% in 2022) Source: ArtTactic Modern & Contemporary African Art Market Report.

Archived: Stephan Welz speaks on the Jewish contribution to cultural life in South Africa

Posted on by Administrator

Last month, in a packed lecture held at the offices of fine art auctioneers Strauss & Co, Stephan Welz, the longest practising fine art expert and auctioneer in South Africa, held the room rapt as he concentrated his attention on the phenomenal, and largely unsung, contribution made to local arts and culture by Jewish philanthropists.

Archived: Record price for Irma Stern at Strauss & Co sale affirms South Africa’s status as the best marketplace to trade artworks by premium South African modernists

Posted on by Carla Spies

Strauss & Co confirmed its status as Africa’s leading auction house when it sold celebrated modernist painter Irma Stern’s devotional scene, Children Reading the Koran, from her 1939 artist trip to Zanzibar, for R22.3 million ($1.227 million) to a bidder in the room at its premier evening sale of modern and contemporary art last night in Cape Town.

Important Collection of original works by 19th-Century Artist Thomas Bowler Goes Up for Auction

Posted on by Carla Spies

Strauss & Co’s March ART online auction features a single artist session focusing exclusively on 19th-century British artist and landscape painter Thomas Bowler. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for collectors to acquire pieces directly from a collection curated by Dr. Frank Bradlow, Bowler’s biographer and a luminary in Africana collectables.

Archived: Big gains and a sad loss for Strauss & Co in 2015

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A month before he passed away on 25 December 2015, distinguished art expert and auctioneer Stephan Welz presided over yet another successful sale at Strauss & Co when, on 9 November, he knocked down painter Alexis Preller’s oil and gesso work The Creation of Adam I (1968) for R8.5 million in Johannesburg. The extraordinary sale result established a new South African record for this enigmatic painter.

The 2014 Vintage plays the starring role in the Strauss & Co March wine auction

Posted on by Carla Spies

Strauss & Co’s March Timed Online Wine auction is themed around the 2014 Vintage. One of the most important measures of great wine is that it should be age-worthy, that it should become more pleasurable and more interesting to drink with time in the bottle. Just how well do modern-era South African wines perform as they get older?