Alexis Preller ,1975
Provenance : Gifted by the artist to Mr and Mrs Jack and Eoni Harrington in 1956, Johannesburg
Exhibited :
Literature :
Notes : Throughout his life, the notion of Africa captured Alexis Preller’s imagination. He was fascinated by the mystique of the continent’s ancient and traditional cultures – their legends, surviving rituals and historical ruins. He had formulated a personal concept of primeval Africa, identifying aspects of its many art forms and customs, symbols from the past while adding his own iconography.Preller experimented with pure abstract compositions from the mid-1950s to late 1960s. When designing the motif in Shield, the artist may have drawn inspiration from ‘Ndebele patterning, or may have referenced archaeological sites, Zulu shields, images on Swazi cloth or the early sketches he made of traditional sculptures during his trips through Swaziland, Zululand and the Congo in the late 1930s. While alluding to an African theme, Preller’s intention here is clearly non-representational. In cool, subtle tonalities he inventively constructs the image as an abstract design with an optical effect – a perceptual device he would master in his later intaglio works.Notably, Shield is reminiscent of the various compositional patterns found in the impressive large scale-triptych All Africa which Preller completed a few years earlier in 1955.
Marelize Van Zyl
Condition_report : No condition report.
