Abstract Composition
Notes : Hannatjie van der Wat’s range of artistic expression is evident in the three lots on the Strauss & Co July 2020 Johannesburg sale. Having studied under Maurice van Essche in the 1940s and Sydney Goldblatt in the 1960s, both of whom emphasised the importance of a good structure to underlie an art work, Van der Wat naturally developed from an organic, gestural style of painting – ‘her forms abstract and painterly, suspended in vague, undefined surrounding’1 – to an exploration of a post-painterly abstraction, characteristically with flat, geometric and striped compositions. Her experimentation with ceramic sculpture in the 1970s led to a return the organic, with a new ‘spontaneous, humanised vigour’.2
1. Esme Berman (1983) Art & Artists of South Africa, Cape Town: AA Balkema, page 467.
2. Ibid, page 468.
