Untitled [1.62] ,2011
Provenance : Strauss & Co, Cape Town, 12 October 2015, lot 631.
The Tasso Foundation Collection of Important South African Art assembled by the Late Giulio Bertrand of Morgenster Estate.
Exhibited : Stevenson Gallery, Johannesburg, Zander Blom: New Paintings, 27 October to 6 December 2011.
Literature : Zander Blom (2013) Paintings Volume I, Cape Town: Stevenson, illustrated in colour on page 207.
Notes : Zander Blom came to public attention as an artist in 2007 with his exhibition ‘The Drain of Progress’ at Rooke Gallery in Johannesburg. His work at the time involved photographing abstract paintings, drawings and prints installed on the interior walls of his home in Brixton, Johannesburg. Blom used these site-specific installations to explore various North American and European traditions of abstract painting. His early references included Kurt Schwitters, Piet Mondrian, Francis Bacon and Victor Pasmore. Blom’s method of recycling art history enabled him to develop an authentic personal language of painting. His use of impasto, gestural mark and pictorial structure, along with his exploitation of the oil paint’s stain on unprimed Belgian linen, presented a distinctive painting style that has been widely imitated. This work bookended a series of gestural paintings redolent of Jackson Pollock and Robert Motherwell, and marked a transition to a more restrained suite of abstract paintings characterised by more refined mark making. The monochromatic palette of some of his earlier works is evident in Untitled [1.62] as is his later concern with colour as form: yellow striations are juxtaposed with black and white shapes. While the work has no obvious representational reference, the structure and texture of the marks suggest forms in nature.
