Beschreibung:

Irma Stern (South African, 1894-1966)Spanish lady
signed and dated 'Irma Stern/ 1950' (upper left)
oil on board
59 x 49cm (23 1/4 x 19 5/16in).
(framed)FootnotesProvenance
A private collection.
In 1950, the year of the present works completion, Irma Stern travelled to Tunis and to Madeira and Madrid on a whistle-stop tour. Given the likeness of the sitter to other portraits done by the artist of Hispanic heritage, it could be concluded that the resent work was completed during her trip to Spain given her great affection for the county. Poor health and reduced mobility meant that she largely restricted her travel to Europe in the 1950s. This was also the year that Stern would first show her work at the Venice Biennale, and her second consecutive year exhibiting at the Association of Arts Gallery in Cape Town, a gallery where she would exhibit every year from 1949 until 1958 and intermittently until 1964. Therefore the 1950's could be argued as a high point in the artist's career.
While a successful time for the artist, the 1950's also marked a period of stylistic change for the artist. The Cape Times reported 'Irma Stern's Change of Style' in October of the same year, suggesting that Stern was also in the process on embarking onto a new realm of artistic creation and experimentation. Indeed the present work displays a more geomatical approach to her paint application as opposed to her previous more fluid, realistic portrait works with singular palette backgrounds such as Young Pondo Man (1929). Stern herself expressed this conscious shift in her practise in a letter to Freda Feldman in 1945: 'I am doing more and more geometrical and abstract of curious values. May not be noticeable to the layman. But one day soon it will bring me the same freedom in form and composition as I have gained in colour'. (Irma Stern: Are you Still Alive? Stern's Life and Art seen through her Letters to Richard and Frida Feldman, 1934-1966, (Cape Town: Orisha Publishing, 2017), p. 128.)
Indeed, Stern had by this time changed her approach from her execution to her approach in representing the sitter. Whilst painted in the last two decades of Stern's life, as seen in the present lot, she remained committed to female portraiture. She had by this period dissolved her phase of still life painting and had opted for more intimate human connections and a sense of spirituality through her art. She was committed to depicting the essence of her subjects, veering away from painting what she saw, to painting the mood of the person and scenario which she was engaging with. The sitter in the present work is to a degree anonymised given the exclusion of detail within the eyes, something that had previously captivated audiences of Stern's work. Now, in the present work, we are instead captivated by the expressive and lively brushstrokes and palette giving emphasis to the experience of the overall image beyond physicality's of the sitter, aiming to evoke the metaphysical elements that also hold value to the artist.
We are grateful for Professor Michael Godby's assistance in the compilation of this footnote.
Bibliography
J.W.M., 'Irma Stern's Change of Style', The Cape Times, (14 October 1950), p. 9.
M. Godby, Irma Stern Nudes, 1916-1965, (Cape Town: Primavera Publishing, 2021)