WORKS FROM THE COLLECTION

The Everard Read Gallery invites you to come view works by artists John Meyer, Tadeusz Jaroszynski, Walter Meyer, Saso Sinadinovski, Dylan Lewis, Olivia Musgrave, Deborah Bell, Alessandro Papetti, Keith Joubert, John Moore and others.

Exhibition up until 8 September 2010

ANTON VAN WOUW

1862-1945

12 February - 7 March 2009

It is a curious aspect of South Africa’s history that the first important artist to chronicle the early development of our nation was a sculptor not a painter. Anton Van Wouw worked within the quiet confines of his Doornfontein studio whilst on the outside the world’s largest and most fractious mining camp was coalescing into the young city of Johannesburg. Possibilities of immense wealth drew the best and the worst of people to this Highveld gold maker. Uitlanders arrived in their thousands. A war was fought by the Boers against the British forces which they finally lost. The migrant labour system was set up to feed the mines with human energy. On the horizon lurked the spectre of apartheid as mutual suspicion, colonial arrogance and quite frankly pure greed drove South Africa down the path to separate development.

Van Wouw, with a skill equal to any international sculptor of his era, produced over the course of his working life, a body of work that succinctly described the reality of his time. Commissioned work included bronze busts of important Rand Lords, fashionable wives and luminary politicians. These formed a good percentage of the output of the Doornfontein studio. Van Wouw’s eminence at the time was further enhanced due to his work on the bronzes that comprised the Kruger monument. It was however the series of small sculptures of archetypal South African characters that have assured his place within the front rank of South African artists. These bronzes are generally quiet and introspective yet all so profoundly powerful that they have become icons of South African art. It is in fact extremely difficult to discuss early South African sculpture without reference being made to the sculptures that comprise this exhibition. Fine casts of these bronzes have become a necessary component of any assemblage of art that seeks to be at all an inclusive one of South African artists.

The exhibition of a Van Wouw collection of Nisini and Massa foundry bronzes is a rare event in South Africa. Everard Read is proud to host this exhibition and wishes to thank the collector who assembled this marvellous set of bronzes over the last 20 years.

Mark Read.