This major and long-overdue retrospective
exhibition, never seen before in the Cape, showcases the work of Alexis
Preller (1911-1975) and is curated by Karel Nel of Wits University.
Preller was a major South African artist,
whose unconventional form of expression was impossible to classify in
terms of the mainstream art movements of his time. Despite his art’s
elusive quality, his richly coloured paintings and distinctive, poetic
vision earned him widespread critical acclaim and a host of loyal
admirers.
In search of an art “rooted in the Africa
soil”, as he put it, Preller drew his initial inspiration from the Ndebele
(Mapogga) people, who lived in the Pretoria vicinity, where he spent most
of his life. To realise his goal of creating an art that was relevant to
his time and place, he travelled to other parts of Africa, visiting
Swaziland, the Seychelles, Zanzibar, Egypt and the Congo. While in Paris,
he also sought inspiration from the African sculptures in the Trocadero
Museum.
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Critics in South Africa have labelled
Preller a Surrealist, which the artist rejected. He has also been referred
to as an Expressionist, particularly by Walter Battiss, who said, “the
expressionist school counts as members – Irma Stern, Maggie Laubser,
Alexis Preller and others of like nature”. It was also Battiss who invited
Preller to join the New Group in 1938, particularly because he, along with
others such as Laubser and Irma Stern, was seen as innovative and
different to other artists of his era. From today’s perspective, Preller
is regarded as an important figure in the South African avant-garde
movement of his time, and as an African modernist.
As an innovative artist, Preller’s
contribution to South African art lies in his combination of the language
of modernism and a distinctly African frame of reference. By incorporating
African influences, he broke away from the European tradition and
developed a new form of artistic expression. “As a form of modernist
vernacular”, writes Clive Kellner, “Preller’s artistic practice is
distinguishable from European modernism. As Picasso was to Europe, so
Preller is to Africa!”
In his art, Preller created a world of signs
and symbols, shaping a private cosmology in which the myths of humankind
are interconnected and interwoven – those from Greek, Egyptian and African
cultures, for example. Kellner comments: “Ultimately, the synthesis of
Preller’s cosmological world is constructed in the mind of the viewer.
Here the intersection of Greek mythology, Mapogga culture, hieratic
emblematic signs such as maize cobs, shells and African masks, and
Egyptian motifs begin to represent another world – an ancient African
universe.”
The exhibition is accompanied by Alexis
Preller, art historian Esmé Berman and artist Karel Nel’s comprehensive
monograph on the artist, which consists of two volumes: an extensive
biography of Preller and a collection of his works.
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