Stanley Fereday Pinker (South African, 1924-2012) Mr Stephen and Mrs Daphne Woolf at Home
Herkunft : Provenance Acquired from the 'South African Association of Arta-Western Cape Region: An Exhibition of Painting By Stanley Pinker' exhibition, Cape Town, July 1974;Thence by decent;A private collection. Exhibited Cape Town, 'South African Association of Arta-Western Cape Region: An Exhibition of Painting By Stanley Pinker', 1974, No. 20. Stanley Pinker was born in Windhoek, South West Africa, in 1924. He began his artistic training in Cape Town under the tutelage of Maurice van Essche. Enrolling in a graphic design course before changing programs after attending a life drawing class. Pinker then continued his studies in Europe from 1951. Throughout the 1950s and 60s, the artist worked and studied in London and the South of France, experiencing European modernist movements first hand. The formal concerns of the Fauves and Cubists inspired Pinker's experimental and theatrical compositions. In Mr Stephen and Mrs Daphne Woolf at Home, depictions of bodies and objects are reduced to essential shapes and colours. While a composition of two intertwined bodies is implied, there is little differentiation in perspective within the body's contextual and objective space. Pinker commented, 'I've always thought of space as something 'tangible' and have been drawn to artists who have used mural-like space rather than artists who create an illusion of space through perspective'. (Stanley Pinker in Michael Stevenson, Stanley Pinker, (Cape Town: Michael Stevenson, 2004), p. 19.) In line with this, the present work presents us with a mural-like scene where there is no distinction between the primary subject and background, but in fact an intertwined overall scene. The colour palette holds integral significance in not only the aesthetic structures of the work, but also the conceptual narrative in Pinker's use of green, gold, black and white tones. These colours correlated to those used in the African National Congress flag, a nod from Pinker to the contextual framework the painting was created in. While this isn't the first time that Pinker has referenced this colour palette in his work (as it had also more literally been used in works by the artist such as Referendum (1992)), a correlation may also be made to the work's subjects and their relationship to the political party. Known for its opposition to the Apartheid and advocation of the rights of black South African people, the ANC was banned between 1960 to 1990 in South Africa due to concerns of the party's swelling popularity in the face of repression and the violent attacks such as the Sharpeville massacre. A self-described liberation movement, this political party has since remained the largest political party in South Africa since 1994. In intertwining this palette with the composition of the work, the mural-esque content becomes focused rather than generalised as Pinker had himself said on his return to South Africa from London 'I started to think that it wasn't enough to paint an idealised specific landscape - the introduction of figures made the situation broader, less specific of place and more specific of content.' (p. 17). The titles of his artworks are of great significance to Pinker. While little is known of the couple that Mr Stephen and Mrs Daphne Woolf at Home refers to, it easily could be concluded that Pinker had a close relationship with the sitters. The intimacy of the scene gives way not only to the domestic lives of Mr and Mrs Woolfe, but also the closeness they may have had with Pinker. Whilst title-specific, the meaning, like in most paintings created by the artist, appears to the viewer in a mirage fashion. We are left wondering, who are Mr & Mrs Woolf? What is their relevance with the ANC? However, these questions only cement Mr Stephen and Mrs Daphne Woolf at Home as an iconic work within the artist's oeuvre,...
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