Organized by the Foundation for the Development of Contemporary African Culture (FDCCA) and curated by Yacouba Konaté and Brahim Alaoui, the exhibition “Prête-moi Ton Rêve” brings together some fifty works by 28 renowned African artists including Jane Alexander, Soly Cissé, Abdoulaye Konaté, Jems Koko Bi, William Kentridge, Chéri Samba, Barthélémy Toguo, Nnenna Okoré, Ouattara Watts.

This collective and continental exhibition, placed under the sign of South-South collaboration, was inaugurated in Casablanca on 18 June 2019 and will travel to a total of 6 African countries.

For its Abidjan stopover, “Prête-moi ton Rêve” is a partner of the 11th edition of MASA, Abidjan Performing Arts Market (7 to 14 March 2020), a major Ivorian cultural event that aims to support African artistic creation.

In parallel to the main exhibition, the Abidjan Contemporary Arts Rotunda will host a tribute exhibition curated by Henri Nkoumo. The carte blanche exhibition will be entrusted to the Ivorian art critic and curator Mimi Errol at the Houkami Guyzagn gallery.

The exhibition “Prête-moi ton rêve” will be open to the public from 12 March and will run until 19 April 2020 before starting its next stopovers across the African continent.

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The next ASPIRE auction will take place on February 14 in Cape Town, South Africa. This “Aspire x Piasa” auction of modern and contemporary African art is unique in that the works are presented in collaboration between the two auction houses Aspire and Piasa.

Since inception, Aspire has achieved resounding success in the areas of 20th century modernism and contemporary art at auction in Africa, as well as in presenting a broader, pan-African offering of modern and contemporary art from the continent. “This is echoed through our partnership with Piasa, one of the few top European firms conducting dedicated auctions of African art, contributing to the international growth and visibility, and consequent demand, for African art.” says Ruarc Peffers, Managing Director at Aspire Art Auctions. “Through our collaboration with PIASA, we are able to bring this remarkable collection to a broader, global audience.” continues Peffers.

Since the first auction of contemporary African art organized by PIASA in 2014, the ten vacations have confirmed the growing demand in the art market for artists from Africa and the Diaspora. There are more and more collectors who wish to embrace the richness of this artistic creation and its geographical variety around the world. To meet this growing demand, PIASA and ASPIRE have come together. By joining forces, we aim to reveal and offer to an ever wider audience the comprehensiveness of contemporary African creation.

Christophe Person
Head of Contemporary African Art, PIASA

The auction will feature works by African modernists such as Jacob Pierneef (South Africa), Hugo Naudé (South Africa), Ablade Glover (Ghana), Ernesto Shikhani (Mozambique), Dumile Feni (South Africa), John Koenakeefe Mohl (South Africa) as well as contemporary artists such as Pierre Vermeulen (South Africa), Moshekwa Langa (South Africa), William Kentridge (South Africa), Mongezi Ncaphayi (Afrique du Sud), Wim Botha (South Africa), Sanaa Gateja (Uganda), Cyrus Kabiru (Kenya) among others.

Download the e-catalogue here.

Aspire x Piasa

Modern and Contemporary African Art

14 February 2020
Cape Town, South Africa

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Aspire Art Auction cements position in chosen markets

Aspire Art Auctions’ latest offering in Cape Town demonstrated the company’s pre-eminence in the South African market in the strategic art segments in which it specialises. Contemporary art took centre stage, with Aspire’s special focus on work by William Kentridge, coinciding with the artist’s magisterial exhibitions in Cape Town. Aspire is also the foremost auction house in the country to sell work in two other specialised areas, namely the work of black South African artists from the twentieth century, and fine art photography. Once again, both of these offerings performed well.

Their SPRING 19 Auction was held on Sunday, 1 September 2019, at Avenue, the V&A Waterfront, Cape Town. As a company, they reaffirm a clear strategic outlook focused on developing value in particular market segments; especially contemporary art, black modernist South African art, and fine art photography, while still demonstrating their expertise and market nous to handle the major signatures of the South African art auction market. A well-positioned focus on the work of William Kentridge, South Africa’s most prominent international contemporary artist, led the sale, timed to coincide with his major exhibition at Zeitz MOCAA and Norval Foundation in Cape Town.  

Kentridge Specialists

Aspire’s ability to successfully sell contemporary art was signalled by the special focus on the work of Kentridge. An early landscape drawing from 1988 led this section on the artist, with Untitled (Witwatersrand landscape) which fetched R2 731 200.

One of the master’s most prominent and internationally exhibited print portfolios, Portage, sold for R682 800. A range of other Kentridge prints on offer such as Four Cats, Summer Graffiti and Black Monkey Thorn all performed well, with the latter fetching well over its high estimate. The strong showing by the Kentridge section of the sale was rounded off by his three-dimensional work Head I, which achieved R170 700.

Success in the Modernist Markets

Aspire has again performed well in more traditional areas of the modernist market with a beautiful landscape by Maggie Laubser, By die See (Seascape with Boats and Birds) selling for R796 600.

Their consistent approach to develop the previously neglected black modernist market segment is notable. Aspire has been succesfull in creating value and building market knowledge in what is becoming a much respected area of South African art. This segment was led by a remarkable drawing by the renowned Dumile Feni, Mother and child, which sold for R546 240, currently the second highest price for a work on paper by Feni. Aspire still holds the auction record for the artist’s work.

A lyrical watercolour and gouache work by Gerard Sekoto, Portrait of a woman, sold for R295 880, well above its high estimate. Other significant sales include an early work by Mmakgabo Mmapula Helen Sebidi, Milking the Cows sold for R68 280 and a beautiful incised wood panel titled Buffalo by Lucky Sibiya sold for R85 350.

Leaders in Contemporary Art and Photography

The sale again demonstrated their established market leadership in the contemporary and photography segments, with many new records set and auction debuts made. Leading the showing in the contemporary collection was a piece by Deborah Bell, Tapestry I hear you with my heart, which sold for R295 880, and an exquisite embroidered work by Billie Zangewa, The Cotswolds, which fetched R227 600, setting a new South African record at auction for the artist.

Earlier this year, Aspire pioneered the first dedicated fine art photography section at auction which performed remarkably well. The company followed up this success in the current auction, with David Goldblatt, with whom Aspire achieved a world record price earlier this year, again taking center stage. His photograph The farmer’s son with his nursemaid, the farm Heimweeberg, near Nietverdiend in the Marico Bushveld. Transvaal (North-West Province), 1964 fetched R318 640, in addition to major successes for works by Mikhael Subotzky and Zanele Muholi that sold above their high estimates.

Artist’s Resale Rights (ARR)

Aspire will once again be paying royalties to living South African artists under the terms of the Company’s Artist’s Resale Rights (ARR) initiative. Aspire voluntarily covers the cost of the ARR percentage fee. To date, Aspire has earned royalties for over 100 living South African artists through their sales, across the market spectrum, and has paid out around R600 000. Their efforts to improve the sustainability of the art industry in the country has been recognized at national level when they won the Business Arts South Africa Best Strategic Project Award in 2017.

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Contemporary art

William Kentridge (B.1955 South Africa)

William Kentridge was born in 1955 in South Africa, and still lives and works in Johannesburg, the city of his birth. Now world renowned for his diverse artistic practice featuring drawing, film work with animation and live action, sculpture, printmaking, painting, stage direction and design for theatre and opera, it was always drawing which lay at the heart of his artworks. It is drawing, principally in charcoal, which informs his works in other media, especially the animated films based on multiple mark making and erasures which brought him to the world’s attention. Since the 1990s, his work has been exhibited and held in major museums and their collections around the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Albertina Museum in Vienna, the Musée du Louvre in Paris, The New Museum in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Louisiana Museum Copenhagen, Sint-Janshospitaal in Bruges, Belgium, the Tate Modern, Tate Britain and Modern Oxford in the United Kingdom.

Producing a sweeping set of scenes, Summer Graffiti possesses a kinetic quality and a magnetic attraction which draws the viewer ever closer. Calling to mind Kentridge’s highly regarded films and processional works, the ‘frames’ exhibited within the set animate the print series. Add to this the dynamic shifts in gaze within the various prints, and the viewer becomes complicit in the interactions of the subjects as they, on the one hand, observe the subjects gazing at one another and, on the other, find themselves confronted by the gaze of the subjects themselves. At a time when Kentridge was contributing to a fundraiser for his old school he found the impetus for the series in a teacher’s manual. The iconic blackboard visible in the set acts as a representational tool for the expression of erotic desires. Known for his depictions of the internal desires of human beings as socially unacceptable, Kentridge alludes here to those hidden impulses.

Billie Zangewa (b.1973 South Africa)

“Billie Zangewa uses silk to create intricate tapestries that reflect light in different ways, based on the position of the viewer relative to the artwork. This results in artworks that appear to dance and perform as the gaze changes and the viewer moves around the image’s environment. Artworks that defy replication in print media or on a computer screen, these are sensory objects that must be viewed in person. Zangewa grew up in Gaborone, where there was limited availability of an artist’s usual infrastructure – no studios, no printing presses, none of the typical materials one would normally associate with the creation of fine art. From this came something remarkable. “To make art I had to use what was available” explains the artist, “[m]y creativity comes from lack – I had to work from scratch”. Born in Malawi, growing up in Gaborone, now living and practicing in Johannesburg, Zangewa explores her intersectional identity in the contemporary context, “constantly challenging the historical stereotyping, objectification and exploitation of the black female body”. Her work is concerned with her lived experience, domestic preoccupations and the underlying universal themes that connect us to each other. The present lot was produced while Zangewa was staying in Europe. The artist said she went to the Cotswolds on a trip for her birthday in the middle of winter during a phone conversation. For her the area is the most beautiful part of England. She was particularly drawn to the town’s architecture and the barren winter trees. The piece is a celebration of the beauty of the place.” Ruarc Peffers, Managing Director at Aspire Auction.

Nandipha Mntambo (b.1982 Swaziland)

Drawing upon a rich tradition of art historical and mythological references, Nandipha Mntambo’s striking self-portrait is a composite in which the artist performs both subjects. The resulting image is tensely ambiguous: both minotaur and woman are frozen in medias res, with a multiplicity of possible outcomes. Nandipha Mntambo was honoured with the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art in 2011. Her work has been exhibited at the South African Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, 2015; the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington DC and the Zeitz Museum for Contemporary Art Africa, among others. Kathryn Del Boccio.

Diane Victor (B.1964 South Africa)

Diane Victor (b. 1964 in Witbank, South Africa) has established herself as a major figure in the South African and International art communities and is renowned for her expert printmaking and draughtsmanship. Victor positions herself within the South African art scene through her bold confrontations with difficult and at times taboo subject matter. At times, her work seems to pose challenges to social and political life in contemporary South Africa, considering issues of corruption, violence and an unequal power distribution. Recently Artskop met her during her residency at Atelier le grand village in Charentes. Moreover, works by Diane Victor will be exhibited at the next London edition of the 1.54 Contemporary African Art Fair with Atelier le Grand Village. Find out more about Diane Victor here. 

This large-scale etching from Diane Victor’s Four Horses series was exhibited as part of her Transcend solo exhibition at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg in 2010. It is a striking work in which an image of a seemingly valorous, apocalyptic horseman on horseback appears as the harbinger of a different era. The rearing horse traverses history, casting a shadow of destruction which is rendered as a detailed aerial view of a historical European city. Victor’s command of mark-making to depict the subject in hauntingly fine detail is evident. She is a master draughtsman and an expert printmaker – here incorporating various traditional techniques with digital printing to heighten meaning. A renowned figure in South African and international art, Victor has exhibited widely at major centers including MoMA in New York.

Modern Art

A George Pemba’s painting (South African 1912–2001)

This George Pemba work from 1979 clearly demonstrates his mastery of the social realist painterly idiom. The interior domestic scene, given a clearer context by its title, is full of the kinds of characterisations and implicit narratives that were typical of Hogarth in the eighteenth century. As with that predecessor, Pemba’s keen eye for detail offers a glimpse into a way of life for urban black South Africans that is gently humorous but also pointed. The gusto with which the old man in the foreground is drinking from the tin, on his haunches, counterpoints the admonishing gesticulations of the dominant woman figure in the midground, as if cautioning against too much celebration of the just-finished initiation ceremony

Dumile Feni (South African 1942–1991)

Dumile Feni’s 1986 drawing, entitled Mother and child , not only explores an established and ubiquitous iconographic convention in art history but one that is also pervasive in his own oeuvre. In fact, his earlier portrayal of Mother and child circa 1966 was once found intolerable by a reviewer, pointing to its disturbingly ‘ugly’ appearance. This compulsion wasn’t about luxuriating over largely Western art historical mores as these relentless returns to the theme were very personal for the artist. Feni lost his mother at a very young age, and was brought up by his older sister, fondly known as Kulie.

Edoardo Villa (South African 1915–2011)

Villa’s genius lies in this extraordinary capacity to conjure images of our time and place from the contemporary industrial materials being generated by new technologies. Janus, produced in 1988, is no exception. Bright yellow emerges from the powerful black forms of Janus that can be viewed in the round. In Roman myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings. He is usually depicted as having two faces, since he looks to the future and to the past. As a god of transitions, he has functions pertaining to birth, journeys and exchange, and is associated with travelling, trading and shipping. Villa’s modernist vision was shared by his great friend, Carmel Back, one of the first woman architects to shape the evolving image of Johannesburg. They recognised each other as fellow visionaries and, according to Back’s daughter, enjoyed a lasting friendship during which they met regularly on most Saturdays to people gaze and gossip over coffee. Villa created Janus as a house-warming gift to the architect for her new home in Parktown, which featured prominently in design publications in the early 1990s.

Cecil Skotnes (South African 1926–2009)

Skotnes, throughout his long career, was noted for his work on carved, incised and painted wooden panels. His central position in and influence on South African art history derives not only from his pedagogical work at Polly Street or even in his membership in the influential 1960s Amadlozi Group. It is much more, as this work reflects, about his long-term search for an adequate visual vocabulary to express his position as an artist wrestling with a European cultural and artistic legacy, and at the same time shaping an African visual idiom. His figural depictions mark most clearly the ongoing inflections he gave to this quest, changing subtly throughout his career, but very definitely marking out his work as characteristically Skotnes.

For more information, inquires or to access to the complete catalogue, please contact Aspire Art Auction.

Modern & Contemporary Art, with a special focus on William Kentridge
Evening Sale | Spring 2019 Public auction hosted by Aspire Art Auctions
Cape Town Spring Sale | 1 September 2019 | 6 pm
Avenue | 40 Dock Road | V&A Waterfront | Cape Town

Auction Preview Times:
Friday 30 August | 10 am to 5 pm
Saturday 31 August | 10 am to 5 pm
Sunday 1 September | 10 am to 5 pm

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The first exhibition to address Kentridge’s output as a sculptor

Why Should I Hesitate: Sculpture will be the first exhibition internationally to address Kentridge’s output as a sculptor, and is a unique focus on this aspect of his practice. Covering several bodies of work, and testifying to his longstanding improvisation when handling three-dimensional form, this exhibition sees the origins of these works in props from his operas and images from his animations stepping off the stage and out of the screen, confronting us directly at ground level. Why Should I Hesitate: Sculpture will also premiere new works commissioned for this exhibition.

A central concern of Why Should I Hesitate: Sculpture is an understanding that Kentridge’s sculptures have agency. Kinetic sculptures make use of megaphones on survey tripods, a deft nod to Russian Constructivism, and imply a propogandist’s broadcasting of an impersonal and mechanical authority. In Singer Trio (2018), for example, ‘ready-made’ sewing machines are given voices for a performance enacted in unison, their megaphones synchronised as they take on a new and humorous presence in this world. Many of Kentridge’s sculptures embody an animated spectacle. Proceeding through a seemingly random construction of abstract planes, as in World on its Hind Legs (2009), we see how graphic forms unexpectedly align, snapping into an organized whole which is visually and metaphorically charged. Move a little further, and the form dissipates once again.

“Norval Foundation is presenting, for the first time, an exhibition focused solely on William Kentridge’s sculptural practice, working in conjunction with the artist and his studio. Kentridges’ sculptures embrace a spontaneous approach and have recently evolved towards the massive, and the monumental. Simultaneously, and in tension to the monumental aspects of his practice, he is revealed to be a choreographer as much as a sculptor.”

Karel Nel, Senior Advising Curator, Norval Foundation.

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Elsewhere, Kentridge’s repertoire of everyday objects and off-the-cuff ideas are translated into rows of small bronze sculptures, syntactically arranged on a shelving unit to read as lines of text on a page. In Paragraph II (2018), horse, nose, jug, camera, megaphone and others, line up to seemingly make rebuses, those visual puzzles evoking words which so delighted the early Surrealists. Several pieces from Kentridge’s visual lexicon have been reworked into scaled-up plaster prototypes from which monumental bronze sculptures have been cast: a gigantic corkscrew, a collapsing jug of Cubist descent, a visual flourish in the form of an ampersand, and the intense presence of an enormous ciné camera – the observing alter ego of Kentridge’s prodigious output perhaps?

The ruptured narrative, so powerfully visible in Kentridge’s work, is choreographed into serried dislocations which collide the space between the personal and the political, the operatic and the mundane, the apparently irrelevant and the socially pertinent. Approaching Kentridge’s sculptures opens us up onto a Dadaist landscape, which both challenges and beguiles.

“Norval Foundation is proud to be hosting Why Should I Hesitate: Sculpture. A key aspect of the Foundation is our commitment to exhibiting the sculptural and installation based practices of a variety of artists, which is facilitated by our purpose-designed building. In particular, we invite artists and curators to respond to gallery eight, our largest gallery, with William Kentridge’s exhibition exemplifying this. The gallery has reinforced floors to support works that weigh as much as eight tons, and reach as high as nine metres. The monumental size of this gallery sits in an ideal contrast to the anti-monumental, spontaneous and theatrical sculptures that form part of this exhibition.”

Elana Brundyn, CEO, Norval Foundation.

Why Should I Hesitate: Sculpture will be accompanied by a visually rich publication, conceived in collaboration with the artist, extending the exhibition in print form. It includes a section that is a catalogue raisonné of William Kentridge’s sculptural practice to date, with another presenting preparatory sketches for several key artworks. It also includes a photo essay charting the development of Kentridge’s large Lexicon sculptures that are included in the exhibition, from maquette stage to plaster original, and then through the bronze casting process itself. A comprehensive essay by Dr. David Freedberg, Pierre Matisse Professor of the History of Art at Columbia University, and Director of The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, locates William Kentridge’s work within several key artistic practices and movements of the Western art historical canon.

William Kentridge, Why Should I Hesitate : Sculpture

24 August 2019 – 23 Mars 2020
Atrium and Galleries 2–8
Norval Foundation
4 Steenberg Road Tokai, Cape Town 7945 South Africa

Exhibition Curators: Karel Nel, Owen Martin, Talia Naicker, Vicky Lekone

Monday – Sunday 10:00 – 18:00
Tuesday Closed
Last admission 45 minutes before closing

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The largest ever survey exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist William Kentridge opens in Cape Town in August. This major exhibition will be hosted simultaneously in two parts by the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA), which will host his multi-media works; and at Norval Foundation, which will present his sculptural works.

Why Should I Hesitate: Putting Drawings to Work, hosted at Zeitz MOCAA, will stage a large oeuvre of Kentridge’s 40-year career, showing works including charcoal drawings, woodcut prints, stop-frame animation, tapestries, installation and video. In addition, the exhibition will pay particular attention to the role of studio practice in Kentridge’s career.

“When conceptualising this exhibition, we wanted to do more than simply attempt to condense many of Kentridge’s projects from his illustrious career into one space. It was vital to unpack Kentridge and reveal more of his processes and how two-dimensional forms assume life. We also wanted to offer a sort of ‘backstage’ view of the artist on his journeys and his experimentations, and sometimes at his most uncertain and vulnerable.”

Explains Azu Nwagbogu, curator of the exhibition.

The exhibition title, Why Should I Hesitate, is taken from the artist’s recent opera, The Head and the Load (2018), which explores some of the paradoxes of Africa’s involvement in the First World War. This question was first posed by an African soldier who had a difficult choice: accept conscription – leaving behind the security of his home, to risk his life in a war of which he had little knowledge – or reject conscription and face certain persecution. Read in the context of Kentridge’s studio practice, Why Should I Hesitate is, therefore, a question that stresses the importance of process over procedure or product. It is an attempt to draw out the artist’s work from the uncertainties of legend, so it can be understood within the context of our ever-changing cultural climate: an exercise that resists inertia but is necessarily framed by doubt.

“While Kentridge remains dedicated to a South African narrative, his projects pose humanist questions of other such similar historical failures and other utopic possibilities for success. In this way, the exhibition may be viewed as a historiographic reading of the world over the last century.”

Adds Tammy Langtry, curator of the exhibition.

Due to the breadth of the artist’s creative practice, the exhibition spans five independent spaces throughout Zeitz MOCAA – Level 3, Level 1, Centre for the Moving Image, BMW Atrium, and a nighttime projection in the Track Shed.

Level 3 : The Biography

The exhibition begins here, charting a course for the visitor from earliest works of drawings and prints (1976 – 2019), to larger theatrically staged works. It encourages the viewer to make imaginative, cross-continental leaps, bridging social, political, and economic systems until they are finally able to land at a personal and granular connection – a product of the catalysing force of Kentridge’s work.

Level 1 : The Processional and the Processes of Making

The exhibition here observes the formalistic aspects of Kentridge’s creation, from drawings to processes of making across multiple media. These galleries focus on the global histories of movement, rooted in a project Kentridge created in Rome, Italy. Titled Triumphs and Laments (2016) Kentridge created a 500-metre temporary frieze on the walls of the river Tiber. This frieze depicted histories of the Roman empire, both with its triumphs and lamentations.

Centre for the Moving Image -Drawings for Projection (1989-2011)

Built out of the form of the original grain silo bins, the viewing rooms exhibit the animated film series, Drawings for Projection (1989 – 2011). This series began as a way to record the process of drawing; a desire to, as Kentridge explains, understand the drawing “not as a finished, finite fact, but as something that is provisional”.

BMW Atrium – Almost Don’t Tremble

Commissioned as a site-specific installation for the exhibition, Kentridge’s recognisable megaphones surround the Zeitz MOCAA BMW Atrium. Through the megaphones, the musical pieces echo currents found within previous musical collaborations, built on existing lexicons of song and sound, and stretched to fill the expansive space. The megaphone is often associated as an instrument of political propaganda. It amplifies and exaggerates sound. Kentridge makes a sculptural caricature of the instrument. Used for both revolution and order, the megaphone’s sphere references a point of origin and trajectory. The visitor can follow the sound around the BMW Atrium as the collective of megaphones plays the intimate song by each composer.

Track Shed – Shadow Procession

The first site, at the entrance to the museum, is historically where the grain silo would receive and send out its stores of grain. Shadow Procession (1999) is projected amongst the original grain silo machinery. The work, an ode to the allegory of Plato’s Cave, speaks to the enslavement of people through the enslavement of knowledge.

The exhibition will be supported by a number of public programmes and events, including a symposium on 27 October that will bring together leading figures in the art world to extend the important dialogue and thematic concerns emanating from Kentridge’s work. An exhibition catalogue/ artist book, entitled Why Should I Hesitate: Putting Drawings to Work, will be on sale at the Zeitz MOCAA shop from 25 August 2019.

Why Should I Hesitate: Putting Drawings To Work

25 August 2019 – 23 March 2020

Exhibition curators Azu Nwagbogu and Tammy Langtry

Zeitz Mocaa

V&A Waterfront, Silo District, S Arm Rd

Waterfront, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa

Level 3, Level 1, Centre for the Moving Image, Trackshed and BMW

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The sale returns for a Fourth Consecutive season on 2 April 2019

This April, Sotheby’s dedicated sale of Modern and Contemporary African Art will return to London for a fourth consecutive season, following a pre-sale exhibition which will run from March 29 – April 2.

Since the Inauguration of the Series, Sotheby’s has Achieved Fifty World Records in the Category Championing Artists from Across the African Diaspora and Underscoring a Rising Global Interest. The international market for Modern and Contemporary African Art is certainly heating up, with exciting conversations igniting across the field, fuelled by milestones including the opening of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art and the Norval Foundation in Cape Town, growth of international art fairs such as 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair in London, New York and Marrakech, Art X Lagos, and of course the highly-anticipated Ghana Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. Sotheby’s own entry into the field further attests the position of modern and contemporary African art firmly in the global market.

Strong results for last African art auction

Last season’s sale at Sotheby’s totalled £2.3 million ($3 million) and attracted collectors from 20 different countries. 2018s sales saw strong results for established artists including Ben Enwonwu (Obitun Dancer; £187,500/$265,744) and El Anatsui (Tagomizor; £670,000/$883,730) to rising stars like Eddy Kamuanga Ilunga, just 27 years old, whose Mangbetu soared to five times above the pre-sale high estimate (£65,000/$92,124).

This season’ insights for the African Art’s auction

This year’s public exhibition and sale will include a carefully curated collection of paintings, photographs, drawings and sculpture from across the African continent. Witnessing first-hand the growth in demand, audience and variety of works, Sotheby’s Head of Department Hannah O’Leary states:

“When it comes to Contemporary art, people are always looking for something new – a demand which absolutely lends itself to this genre. Spanning over 16 countries, a kaleidoscope of cultures and themes, and comprising the works of both established and emerging artists alike, our Modern and Contemporary African art auction remains one of the most exciting, innovative and relevant sales in the market today. African art has undergone something of a Renaissance in the past decade, signalled by rapidly developing interest from collectors across the globe. Indeed, over a quarter of buyers in last year’s sale were from the African continent but the categories collector base spans Asia, Europe, Australasia and North America, and it is fantastic to see African artists surging to the forefront of international collections, both private and public. This is therefore an incredibly exciting time to be dealing with modern and contemporary African art, and there remain some tempting opportunities for collectors to get involved. Our sale features work by some of the biggest names in the field at affordable prices, but, as these works become more and more in demand, it’s unlikely to stay this way for long. If you’re in London this April, make sure you visit the exhibition – there really is something for everyone to see”.

El Anatsui, Zebra Crossing 2, EST. £550,000 – 750,000

Sotheby’s April sale will be led by Zebra Crossing II, a bottle cap tapestry by contemporary art superstar, El Anatsui. El Anatsui has explored a wide range of media including ceramics, tropical hardwoods, milk-tin lids and aluminium bottle tops, which the artist uses to make the glittering metallic tapestries for which he is most known. The success of El Anatsui’s bottle cap works can be attributed to the artist’s ability to effortlessly manipulate the rigid metallic material in a way that creates a finished work that is robust yet malleable, luxurious and incredibly cloth-like.

El Anatsui has enjoyed several ground-breaking exhibitions such as the internationally touring show, When I Last Wrote to you About Africa in 2010. The artist’s largest survey exhibition to date, El Anatsui: Triumphant Scale, curated by Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, opens at Munich’s Haus der Kunst this week and will travel to Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha in the autumn. El Anatsui will also represent Ghana at the Venice Biennale this year alongside Ibrahim Mahama, whose work is also included in the auction.

HASSAN EL GLAOUI, LA SORTIE DU ROI, EST. £80,000-120,000

La Sortie Du Roi features the military horses and riders for which El Glaoui is famed. Speaking of his work in 2009, El Glaoui said, “My love of my country has been the defining spirit of my painting. I have recorded our ancestral roots, the flowers in the Valley of the Kasbah and the red Cherifian palaces, the royal courteges with their long lines of white burnouses and the mounted cavalry and their horses.”

A powerful celebration of his homeland, La Sortie du Roi triggers a multiple of senses in the viewer: a dusty pink palette indicative of a dry and arid climate, the ice cool shade offered by the white and blue burnouses, and the ghostly, mirage-like wisps of paint surrounding each horse which endow the painting with an electrifying whirr of movement.

Painter El Glaoui has risen to international acclaim and is credited as one of the pioneers of contemporary art in Morocco. The artist expressed gratitude to Winston Churchill for his career; during his visit to Marrakech in the 1940s, the Prime Minister convinced El Glaoui’s father, the last Pasha of Marrakech, to allow the budding artist to pursue his artistic vocation. The works of Churchill and El Glaoui have subsequently appeared together in a joint exhibition in London.

KAMALA IBRAHIM ISHAQ, PREPARATION OF INCENSE – ZĀR CEREMONY, EST. £70,000-90,000

Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq is recognised as both a pioneering member of the Sudanese art scene as well as a feminist icon and one of the most important female artists operating on the African continent today. The artist was one of the first women to graduate from the College of Fine Arts in Khartoum in 1963. Between 1960 and 1975, the Khartoum art scene was dominated by the renowned Khartoum School, an artistic movement that began in Sudan in the 1960s with the aim of creating a new visual language that reflected a newly independent Sudan. Kamala Ishaq was part of the recent exhibition at Saatchi Gallery “Forest and Spirits Figurative Arts from Khartoum School”, curated by Roubi l’Roubi.

Notable members included artists Ibrahim El-Salahi and Sarah Elmur (and works by both of those artists are included in the auction). In 1971, despite being a prominent member of the group, Kamala left and founded the Crystalist Group, advocating for a new Sudanese artistic aesthetic that was modeled on diversity and transparency. The present lot demonstrates Kamala’s interest in Sudanesespiritual processes, especially a traditional practice called the Zār Ceremony, through which the individual is rid of evil spirits. Kamala Ibrahim Ishaq’s work has been widely exhibited at renowned institutions such as MoMA PS1 (USA), the Whitechapel Gallery (UK), the Sharjah Art Museum (UAE), Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (USA), Camden Art Center (UK), among many others. Read more.

CHÉRI SAMBA, J’AIME LA COULEUR, EST. £40,000-60,000

Chéri Samba is one of the most prestigious artistic figures to emerge out of the Democrat Republic of Congo in recent years. Born in a village 80km outside of Kinshasa, Samba was one of four self-taught Congolese artists who, in a newly democratic 1970s Kinshasa, founded the movement known today as Popular Painting. The genre plays with satire, irony and humour to address everyday life in the capital including social, political and economic issues such as popular customs, sexuality, AIDS, social inequity, materiality and corruption.

Influenced by advertising in the city, the artists combine bright, bold colours with text to create politically charged conversation pieces that address viewers directly and honestly. Drawing on his past training as a comic strip and billboard artist, the artist’s work often involves text, outlining a clear message or storyline. He has gone on to exhibit at some of the world’s most prestigious institutions including the Foundation Cartier and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. Sotheby’s presents a Samba’s J’aime la couleur, an unusual and dramatic example of Samba’s most iconic imagery.

EDDY KAMUANGA ILLUNGA, (B. 1991), PALM, EST. £25,000-35,000

Amalgamating both traditional and ‘popular culture’ styles, Illunga’s oeuvre reflects both the rapid modernisation of Kinshasa, Africa’s third largest city and the artist’s home town, and the resulting uncertain sustainability of the broader heritage and daily rituals of the Mangbetu people – whom form the subject of this stunning work. Understanding the present through the past is central to Illunga’s practice. The classical poses and rich drapery of the artist’s monumental figurative paintings are reminiscent of European Old Masters. Yet, the rubber flip-flops and vibrant swathes of fabrics capture Mangbetu’s craft and heritage. What’s more, electronic circuitry, the artists trademark patterning, tattoos the figures bare skin, signalling to the digital twenty-first century.

This style of painting originated early in the artist’s career, after learning that the Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the world’s biggest producers of coltan, an ore strenuously mined by hand that contains tantalum – a key metal for the electronics industry. Shocked by the growing number of South African villages destroyed to exploit these mineral’s, Illunga’s microchipped figures symbolise the exploitation of both his country and its people, and the harsh reality of globalisation. With its painterly finesse, complex symbolism and powerful appeal to both eye and conscience, Illunga’s work has shot to international prominence. The sale of Palm follows the sale of Illunga’s Mangbetu at Sotheby’s in March 2018, which achieved £65,000/$92,124, storming past the pre-sale estimate of £8,000-12,000.

IBRAHIM MAHAMA, RAFIA EB X, EST. £20,000 – 30,000

Rafia EB X by Ghanaian artist Ibrahim Mahama is an elegant wall hanging consisting of repurposed burlap jute sacks. The artist is most known for stitching together these jute sacks in order to create large textiles which are often dropped over architectural forms. Imported into Ghana from south-east Asia and then re-used for the exportation of cocoa, charcoal and other crops, Mahama’s jute sacks are synonymous with Ghana’s trade history and are used to comment on Ghana’s economic relationship with the rest of the world, starting from post-colonialization to present day.

Mahama’s work ranges from large site-specific installations to more intimate pieces such as Rafia EB X. Trained as a painter, Mahama often refers to works such as Rafia EB X as paintings, seeking to highlight the elegant form that hangs on the wall whilst also challenging the boundaries of what it means to paint. Mahama will represent Ghana at the Venice Biennale this year alongside El Anatsui, whose work is also included in the auction, in a national pavilion co-curated by the architect Sir David Adjaye.

The sale will feature also Harvest Scrolls, 1983, estimate £30 000 -50 000, a work  from Ethiopian artist Alexander Skunder Boghossian,considered as part of Creative currents of the Nile.

The Nigerian artist, Uzo Egonu, Women Reading, 1978 estimate £12 000 – 18 000 and the south African artist William Kentridge, Head (Orange), estimate £ 30 000 – 50 000, among others.

 

Modern & Contemporary African Art
Auction in London
02 April 2019
2:00 PM BST

Sotheby’s
34-35 New Bond Street
London W1A 2AA
+44(0)20 7293 5000

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