Irma Stern

Acquired directly from the artist by the mother of the present owner

The canvas is not lined and there are no signs of retouching visible under UV light. This work is in very good condition. Colours: The colours are richer and warmer, particularly the yellow, in the original. The mauve is more pronounced.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Born into a German-Jewish family, Irma Stern spent most of her early life travelling between Germany and South Africa. Her works demonstrate a confluence of widely divergent cultural traditions and aesthetic values, and combine her Western heritage and formal artistic training with a colourful exoticism derived from her life in South Africa. Stern studied at the Weimar Academy and the Levin-Funcke Studio in Germany, and this experience encouraged her adoption of Modernist artistic practices. Indeed, her early encounter with the German Expressionist Max Pechstein was to have a great influence on her work. Stern's emotional temperament and vivid pictorial imagination were particularly conducive to the Expressionist style.

Cape Homesteads is an outstanding example of Stern's uniquely vital and colourful interpretation of the natural landscape in South Africa. Painted in 1934, it is a rare precursor to the views of the Cape which she was to paint during the Second World War when she was unable to travel outside of the country. It offers an insight into her very personal identification with the landscape and the particular geographical features that would appear frequently in her paintings during the late 1930s and 1940s. The bold and energetic application of paint has created a rich impasto on the surface of the canvas which animates the lush and exotic colours, whilst the play of light adds a chimerical quality to the scene. Stern's representation of the landscape is mediated by her unique and visionary response to her natural surroundings.