Cosmic Events ,1959
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Notes : In Heath's work, the influences of '(Graham) Sutherland, (Paul) Nash and other English contemporary artists' meet a 'new cultural and geographic terrain' in South Africa.1 Cosmic Events is an exemplary large work from the last decade of the artist's career, during which he turned almost entirely to abstraction, although in the tradition of British modernism, the roots of representation remain. Leeb-du Toit describes these works as 'powerful and ominous, their strength located in their sublimity in scale, saturated colour and hermetic content'.2
Heath's daughter Jinny, commenting on the present lot, noted that her father's 'fascination with thorn forms started shortly after his arrival in South Africa in 1947'.3 Images of thorns recur in Heath's work 'until the year of his early death in 1969, when he produced the powerful painting Thornveld Fire'.4 In reference to another sketch, Jinny notes the 'multiple possible meanings' of the thorn forms, which might include the Karroo landscape and perhaps even Christ's thorny crown.
Images of thorns recur in Heath's work 'until the year of his early death in 1969, when he produced the powerful painting Thornveld Fire'.4 In reference to another sketch, Jinny makes reference to the 'multiple possible meanings' of the thorn forms, which might include the Karroo landscape and perhaps even Christ's thorny crown.5
Cosmic Events is an example of an identifiably 'modernist-inspired contemporary South Africa idiom' that deals directly with the same crises of faith and representation that occupied many of the artist's British contemporaries.The painting combines Heath's characteristic visual intensity in its 'expressive interpretation of form, diaphanous layering of saturated colour and tone [and] conceptual form and content'.7
1 Juliette Leeb-du Toit (2009) Jack Heath: Mediating Modernism in KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg: Tatham Art Gallery.
2 Ibid.
3 Jinny Heath. (2015) Jinny Heath: An Artist Family, [Online], Available: http://jinnyheath.tumblr.com/
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Juliette Leeb-du Toit (2009) Jack Heath: Mediating Modernism in KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg: Tatham Art Gallery.
7 Ibid.
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