FIFTY years since her death in 1966, the works of celebrated South African artist Irma Stern are in greater demand than ever before.
Her oil on canvas paintings top the list of the most valuable artworks by local artists, regularly fetching more than R5 million at international auctions.
But while Stern’s art hangs in galleries around the world, by far the largest and most prestigious collection of her work is housed in a gallery in a quiet street in Rosebank.
“We have a wondrous collection of work,” said UCT Irma Stern Museum director Christopher Peter. “It is our philosophy here to display as much as possible. We want people to see the range, the importance and some of the quirky aspects of her work.”
The museum, in Cecil Street, looks nondescript from the outside. It’s behind a large cream wall with just a small entrance gate and a sign you could easily miss if you weren’t looking for it.
But behind the wall is the 19th century house where Stern lived and worked.
The museum houses much of Stern’s personal art collection from her almost 60-year career.
“It was in her will that her entire collection be kept together… for the people of South Africa,” said Peter. “It was a gift to the nation.”
UCT looks after the upkeep of the house, while the art collection is owned and curated by the Irma Stern Trust.
The museum’s permanent collection has over 80 of Stern’s oil on canvas paintings, as well as many watercolours, gouaches, etchings, charcoals and pencil drawings from her entire career. One of the earliest works in the collection is a watercolour of two ballet shoes she painted in 1908 when she was just 14, which she has signed with a flowery signature.
A number of her final works are also exhibited, many painted in the south of France where she spent much of her later years.
The Irma Stern Trust has also preserved her artist’s studio, and visitors can see where she sat and painted at her original easel, as well as her paints, palette knives and stool.
“She always worked very hard.
“She had great personal conviction and long hours were spent painting,” said Peter. Stern, he added, was “in her prime” in the late 1930s and 1940s.
During this period she travelled extensively seeking new experiences in Senegal, Zanzibar, the then Congo and other African countries.
Between the 1920s and the 1950s, she travelled regularly to South Africa’s east coast.
“When she travelled, she was looking and engaging and painting. This is how many of the now extraordinarily valuable studies of people of the Eastern Cape, Transkei and Zululand and Swaziland were completed,” said Peter.
“She was literally painting out there in the field, or she would come back with detailed sketches to her studio to fully complete them.”
The museum has also kept her books, from German translations of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky, to art books on Picasso and Van Gogh, and a collection of German and Chinese fairy tales.
While Stern displayed almost exclusively her own artwork in her house – “she loved her own works”, said Peter – she also accumulated a fine collection of Congolese art, including African masks, figurines and statues, and raffia work.
“All of it is on display in the passage where it was displayed during her lifetime,” he said.
Many were also used as props in her artwork.
Stern also painted scenes on panels on cupboards, doors and even windows. In the dining room, a large cupboard has been painted with religious imagery. Stern was Jewish, but according to Peter had a broad appreciation of early Christian religious iconography.
The cupboard’s centre panel shows a nativity scene, with magi clustering around the Virgin Mary. Bending down, Peter pointed to one of the figures: “That’s her former husband, Dr Johannes Prinz,” he said with a smile.
The Stern Museum is open from Tuesday to Friday from 10am to 5pm, and on Saturdays from 10am to 2pm. Entrance is R20 for adults and R10 for pensioners and students. It also houses other exhibitions. Today, the new exhibition Last Light by artist Josie Grinrod opens.
Weekend Argus thanks the Irma Stern trustees for their use of images from the museum.