Irma Stern (South African, 1894-1966) Zululand (Framed)
Procedencia : [Timeline chronologique]
1926-04-03 | To avoid this criticism, and to continue to discover 'the spirit of Africa at its happiest and most colourful' (quoted in The Cape Argus, 3 April 1926), Stern abandoned Southern Africa, at least for a time, and travelled elsewhere on the continent.The composition of Zululand, which was made at this critical juncture in Stern's career, suggests that the artist changed her conception of the work as she progressed with the work
1933-07-05 | In an interview conducted in 1933, she recognised that the traditional cultural and social practices of diverse Black communities in South Africa were disappearing (The Cape Argus, 5 July 1933)
1967-04-15 | Exhibited London, Grosvenor Gallery, Irma Stern Memorial Exhibition: Paintings of Europe and the African Continent, 1914-1965, 14 March - 15 April 1967, no. 29Cape Town, South African National Gallery, Homage to Irma Stern, 1968, no. 22
2003-11-29 | Struik Publishers, 1974), p. 58 (illustrated) Irma Stern: Expressions of a Journey, exh. cat., Standard Bank Gallery, Johannesburg, 25 September-29 November 2003, p. 158 (illustrated)Brushing up on Stern: featuring works from the permanent collection of the Iziko South African National Gallery, exh. cat., Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, 23 July-1 November 2015, p. 31 (illustrated)Sean O'Toole, Irma Stern: African in Europe European in Africa (Munich, London & New York: Prestel, 2020), pp. 52 & 54 (illustrated)Irma Stern Nudes, 1916-1965, exh. cat., Irma Stern Museum, Cape Town; Sanlam Art Gallery, Bellville, May-September 2021 (illustrated, front and back cover).Zululand was painted at a critical time for Irma Stern's painting of Black African peoples
[Propriété non datée]
- The collection of Basil Robinson;Acquired by the current owner's family;By descent to the current owner
- Literature Neville Dubow, Irma Stern (Cape Town & Johannesburg: C
- Soon after, on a visit to Durban in July 1935, Stern wrote to her friends Richard and Freda Feldman in Johannesburg: 'I am trying to find out which places in Zululand would still be okay [to encounter these traditional practices]
- It looks to me this is my last trip trying to find things that are dying out, thanks to ourselves' (quoted in Klopper, 2017: p. 50).In the same letter to the Feldmans, Stern noted that she would soon attend 'a large native dance' that was being organised for tourists by the Durban Municipality
- Ironically, taking into consideration the anthropological impetus behind her work, it seems that many of her drawings of young women in ceremonial dress were made on this occasion, rather than in the Reserve areas
- Moreover, the paintings she composed in her studio after her return to Cape Town, such as The Water Carriers, were assembled from sketches and memories of this occasion
- In comparison with the languorous works from Swaziland and elsewhere of the 1920s, these Zululand paintings exhibit a new vigour with their bright colour and forceful modelling
- It seems that Stern could not bring herself to record the transformation of African society she was lamenting in her writing and, instead, insisted on the reality of her romanticised Black African idyll in paint
- Stern's buying public continued to support her African work, especially her drawings, but voices were being raised against this 'highly idealised image' (see Feldman, 1935)
- Stern has chosen the horizontal or landscape format, which is unusual in her depiction of Black African people, to accommodate the collection of four apparently independent head-and-shoulder figures
- There appears to be no narrative here nor, unlike The Water Carriers, any occasion on which these people might have been grouped together in real life
- They seem, instead, to have been made as four independent studies
- Moreover, in another comparison with The Water Carriers, the beadwork and other ethnographic deta
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