Johans Borman Fine Art
Art in Cape Town

Johans Borman Fine Art / Information resource for South African Art.

We have been conditioned, from the time that we were able to comprehend the concept of investments, to believe that the value of fixed property and the trustworthiness of our banks are beyond doubt. With South African collectors paying millions of Rands for works by our most desirable artists, there is no doubt that our art has now become a recognised asset class. The results of art sold at auction are always regarded as important indicators of current market values as well as trends in the art market. It is, however, a very important and supposedly transparent part of the art market and therefore deserves closer scrutiny. With her German Expressionist background, she introduced the highly conservative South African society to Modernism during the 1920’s and managed to shift the prevailing perceptions about art over the following four decades. Her paintings have often been criticised for being naïve and childlike, but these critics miss the spiritual undertone of her work, where she strives to celebrate and praise the harmonious qualities of the Earth, and all life on it, under a benevolent Creator. He had established himself as a pioneer of social realism, taking his inspiration from the realities and struggles of urban black people’s everyday life in a troubled South Africa. As one of Africa’s leading modern artists, he regarded his objects and style as the metaphors and vehicle he needed to communicate his vision and not as an end in itself. In this way he identifies with the emotional force of the landscape in order to capture his experience of it in an image. The final result is a celebration of the magnitude and expansiveness of the land. Frans David Oerder was born in Rotterdam, Holland in 1867; one of seven children. Upon graduation he toured Italy, and thereafter continued his art studies in Brussels under Ernest Blanc-Garin. At the academy, he was acquainted with George Grosz and Max Pechstein, along with a number of other young artists who later would become founders of modernist art movements around Germany. Upon her return to South Africa in 1908, she began to teach art in Cape Town. She began studying art at the University of Natal in 1932, and was granted a scholarship to continue her art studies at the Royal College of Art in London from 1935 until After completing his studies, he enrolled as an apprentice sign-writer, continuing to pursue his art in his free time. In 1927 Krige began his studies at the Michaelis School of Fine Art at the University of Cape Town. With the encouragement and support of his brother, Krige continued to take art classes and to sketch and paint in Johannesburg. Mayer moved to South Africa in 1898, seeking a better climate for his health. He took up employment as Assistant Land-Surveyor in the Orange Free State, and a year later joined to Boer side in the Anglo-Boer War. Cecil Skotnes was born in 1926, the son of missionaries. He was their fourth child and the last to survive to adulthood. As an accomplished jazz alto-saxophonist, he also painted lively music and dance scenes, where his individual style of abstraction managed to successfully capture the energy and movement. Never achieving great commercial success, Koboka is a little known painter whose work is rarely seen but deserves recognition as one of the pioneering modernists in South African post-war abstraction.