JOHANNESBURG: Strauss & Co’s auction held on Monday 16 May reinforced the strength of the current art market when a capacity audience bid enthusiastically on key art pieces realising a total of R37 902 555.

An exhibition and auction of artworks by prominent alumni from the Michaelis School of Fine Art – in aid of bursaries and scholarships at the school - From the 12 to 20 July 2011 the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, will host a fundraising exhibition and auction of work of its prestigious alumni and staff, in aid of bursaries and scholarships at the school, Hiddingh Campus, 37 Orange Street, Gardens, Cape Town.

Cape Town: This week the Michaelis School of Fine Art hosted its much anticipated Alumni and Staff Auction in aid of bursaries and scholarships at the school. Stephan Welz, Managing Director of Strauss & Co. and his team auctioned ninety lots of work by prestigious and emerging artists, raising a substantial sum which the school will use to establish a fund to support talented and needy students with their studies.

Irma Stern’s Two Arabs (R20 000 000 – 25 000 000) is certainly the most important painting to be offered at auction in South Africa over the past decade and will no doubt create a great deal of excitement amongst collectors at Strauss & Co’s upcoming auction to be held at the Vineyard Hotel, Newlands, on 26 September 2011.

The star of the show in Strauss & Co’s September 2011 auction in Cape Town is Two Arabs by Irma Stern. This painting is one of the highlights from a group of works painted by Irma Stern in Zanzibar in 1939 where she spent four months. It ranks equally with two major Sterns recently sold at auction, Arab Priest, which achieved R33 411 915 and Bahora Girl, which sold for R26 062 159.

Lucas Sithole’s Charging Afrikander set the auction room alight at Strauss & Co’s May sale when fierce bidding drove the price way above the estimates of R300 000 – 500 000 to achieve a record of R946 900.

Three major works by Gerard Sekoto feature on Strauss & Co’s upcoming auction on 7 November 2011 at the Country Club Johannesburg in Woodmead. Sekoto’s international status as a major African artist is affirmed by Dr Christine Mullen Kreamer, Deputy Director & Chief Curator, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution: Gerard Sekoto is a very important figure in the art history of African modernism. He sensitively portrays the dignity of daily life in black communities in paintings rich with color and infused with a light that seems to glow from within. His works suggest a sense of calm, despite the challenges that this artist must have endured under apartheid. His international reputation was hard-fought and justly earned.