In a fierce and fast-paced bid, Vladimir Tretchikoff’s painting, Lady from the Orient, sold for R31.11m last night. It is the most expensive artwork ever sold on auction in Africa.
The painting was the highlight of Strauss & Co’s latest art sale of about 100 works, including pieces by other South African giants such as Irma Stern, George Pemba, Gerard Sekoto and more.
The iconic piece was sold to a telephone bidder after a battle of 89 bids, narrowly beating a determined in-room contender, says the auction house.
The last major Tretchikoff on the market was in 2013 – the stunning Chinese Girl, which sold for a whopping R23m back then. And it follows hot on the heels of another record: the $13.6m sale of South African Marlene Dumas’s Miss January at a Christie’s auction in New York last week; the highest-ever price set by a living woman artist.
Yesterday’s final tally is actually a major uptick in price for the Tretchikoff piece, given that the original estimate for the work sat between R5m and R7m.
Mark Read, chair of the Everard Read gallery, says while it is a “surprise and delight for the art market”, he’s not shocked that it sold so well. “Strauss did a very professional job of marketing that picture,” he says. “They were very conservative on the estimate.”
The 1955 painting of Valerie Howe, a Cape Town grocer’s daughter, is one of the most iconic portraits of the 20th century, capturing the heady fusion of Eastern influence and Hollywood glamour that propelled Tretchikoff to global fame.
“It remains one of the most iconic and widely loved images produced by the artist following his move to South Africa in 1946,” the company’s art department head, Dr Alastair Meredith, told Currency ahead of the auction. “Upon its reproduction as a print, Lady from the Orient achieved astonishing success, becoming the second-best-selling print in Britain in 1962. Tretchikoff’s vision has proven remarkably resilient and his works continue to command record prices at auction.”
Read says it also helps that there is a fair amount of cash being funnelled into the art market currently, making for some stunning prices. “A greater proportion of wealthy people’s disposable income goes into art these days than it has in any other stage in our history.”
The Tretchikoff is not the only piece that went for a pretty penny. Meredith, with deft understatement, describes the auction as “a very strong sale”.
“We sold a beautiful drawing by William Kentridge, an important drawing from the mid-1980s, for R2.2m.”
A sculpture by Anton van Wouw also did brilliantly – “We had a very rare, very special small casting of Slegte Nuus that also went way beyond its estimates,” he tells Currency.
Paintings by JH Pierneef were also snatched up; the painter remains hugely popular among local and international buyers.
In total, the sale made R62.9m.
The South African art market
South African art has been attracting international attention like never before. Over the past decade, there has been a sudden and enormous interest in work coming out of Africa.
Meredith says that one in five of the items sold by Strauss & Co are sold to international bidders. While a sizeable proportion of them are South African expats, this widespread interest is great for the local art market and the artists themselves.
Read considers this to be a result of South Africa’s unique and turbulent history. “Art always has been a window into the soul of any nation,” he explains. And for artists who operate in “a country and an era where there is change and strife”, there will always be a lot for artists to express, to protest or uplift.
Meredith agrees on this point, using the Paris Noir exhibition as an example. This exhibition, on display at the Pompidou Centre, celebrates generations of Black artists from across the world who found a home in the bustling city of Paris.
Works here revolve around themes of colonialism, race, belonging and transformation – themes only an African diaspora could uniquely capture.
Front and centre of this exhibition is a self-portrait of Gerard Sekoto – a lively, colourful and complicated piece.
Neither Read nor Meredith expect a gigantic boom in the local art market, but they agree it is still robust and occasionally frothy, with pieces like Lady from the Orient exemplifying the gems that can be found on the scene.
Top image: Vladimir Tretchikoff’s ‘Lady from the Orient’.
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