Palimpsest
Notes : An index card complied by Professor Murray Schoonraad for the Executor of the Walter Battiss estate in 1982 accompanies the lot.
Walter Battiss had a life-long interest in southern African rock art, travelling to many sites and caves around the country. He published books on the subject, and, more importantly, he adapted the elongated figures of typical rock paintings while developing his own artistic style from the 1940s to the late 1960s. Palimpsest is a philosophical commentary on the fact that history can never really be erased or painted over, but can only serve as a new canvas for creative expression. References to traditional rock art can be seen on the right-hand side of the present lot, while Battiss’s ‘overpainting’ of history, dominates the picture plane.
