Strauss & Co Art Talks: ICTAF 2026 

19 May 2026

The company’s programming around its benchmark auction sales taking place during the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, including the talks programme at ICTAF, is dedicated to education around South African and African art in general, from historical, aesthetic and market-related perspectives.  Strauss & Co provides much needed educational and thought leadership programming, stepping in where there are institutional gaps in the public appreciation and understanding of our art and cultural heritage. The talks were as follows: 

Legacy in Motion – The Impact of Modern Art on Today’s Artists  

Strauss & Co Senior Art Specialist and Head Curator, Wilhelm van Rensburg presented a talk considering how contemporary artists have been inspired and influenced by Modernism. The understanding of the position and importance of contemporary African art in recent art history has increased greatly and has led to a renewed interest in the antecedents of today’s art, especially in Black Modernism, particularly in South African art history. The aim of the talk was to show, through a review of the series of legacy exhibitions curated and held at Strauss & Co over the past decade, that contemporary artists are working from a strong legacy of modern art with which they engage stylistically and conceptually. These shows are based on the principle of pairing artists to highlight affinities in and through their work, for example pairing George Pemba and Robert Hodgins (2021), Mary Sibande and Dorothy Kay(2022), and, recently, Gerard Sekoto and Lena Hugo (2025).These legacy exhibitions are one of many examples of the deep-seated social responsibility of Strauss & Co in terms of art education. 

Collecting for Life: Panel Discussion 

Writer, editor and curator Sean O’Toole facilitated a panel discussion with esteemed collectors Frank Kilbourn​, Herman Steyn​, Teresa Raposo and Michael Silver​. O’Toole posed questions allowing collectors to discuss their different approaches to sustainability, longevity and impact from their collections, and the complexities of creating legacies from a collection – such as making significant collections part of one’s estate planning, and the question of housing and exhibiting a private collection. This crucial part of the art ecosystem is often shrouded in secrecy, with private collectors loathe to discuss their passion for art publicly. The session was designed to demystify some of that process and focus on how to make art collecting part of the national consciousness.  

The South African Secondary Market vs The World 

Strauss & Co Director, Art Department Head, Senior Art Specialist and Senior Auctioneer Dr Alastair Meredith presented a unique art historical talk exploring how the South African market created its own stars, trends, records and idiosyncrasies. For decades, the South African secondary market developed and evolved in relative isolation, largely due to the series of international cultural boycotts and ostracization the country endured under apartheid. That same isolation changed the SA art market fundamentally – producing entirely new genres of artmaking in response. From an art ecosystem point of view, the local artworld was driven by an admittedly small but knowledgeable group of private, institutional and corporate collectors. In its own right it was a well-supported and self-regulating market which grew consistently across all price points, and was defined by its resilience, transparency and opportunity. While the reputations, and markets, of homegrown masters were celebrated and consolidated locally, their international exposure was sadly limited. Meredith discusses these features within the context of the broader international market, revealing interesting differences and similarities. ​​