CAPE TOWN.- Irma Stern, South Africa’s most successful female artists, will be the focus of a dedicated sale Irma Stern: Time | Line staged by the leading African auction house, Strauss & Co., at Welgemeend Manor House in Cape Town on Wednesday, 8 June 2022.

Comprising 140 works from the Irma Stern Trust Collection as well as other private properties, the sale will feature rare paintings, drawings, prints, books and a stoneware piece that collectively span the entirety of Stern’s prolific and distinguished career.

All proceeds of the 124 artworks released by The Trustees of the Irma Stern Trust from its Collection, many of which have never been exhibited before, with go to strengthen the Collection for the future. This includes making it more accessible by developing the Irma Stern Trust website into an important research resource. In doing so, the trustees bring Irma Stern’s aim of promoting fine arts within and outside South Africa to fruition, as stipulated in the artist’s final will and testament.

The sale will be presented chronologically and opens with seven lithographs from the artist’s print portfolio Visionen (Visions), published in 1920 by the Berlin-based Hesperiden Verlag. The sale features works made in every decade from 1920 until the artist’s death in 1966, with many of her major themes covered, notably portraiture, travel pictures, nudes, religious subjects and marine scenes.

Irma Stern: Time | Line includes a strong selection of female subjects representing various ages, ethnicities and races. These also include a number of major oils depicting singular and powerful women. They include Stern’s 1929 portrait of charismatic Capetonian Roza van Gelderen (1890–1976), a life-long friend of the artist and important model (estimate R4 – 6 million), and Psychic: An Old Malay Woman (estimate R7 – 9 million/US$460,000-560,000), a portrait of Cape Muslim sitter made in 1941 that is notable for its lavish use of pink.

Notwithstanding her decades-long reputation as the most expensive South African artist at auction, the range of works released by the Trust will cater to a broad spectrum of collectors. The sale includes a number of etchings and drawings of female subjects from the 1950s with estimates starting at R10 000. The sale also includes a selection of Stern works drawn from private collections, among them an outstanding terracotta vase in a female form from 1951 (estimate R40 000 – 60 000/US$2,500-3,750) from the Shill Collection.

All works will be on view at a special preview exhibition at Welgemeend Manor House (2–8 June 2022). Dr Kathy Wheeler, curator of the Irma Stern Trust Collection, will be in conversation with Strauss & Co senior art specialist Matthew Partridge on Saturday, 4 June at 10am at the exhibition venue. The talk will be followed by a walkabout with Strauss & Co specialists at 11 am.

The auction starts at 6pm on Wednesday, 8 June 2022 and will be run as a live virtual auction.