17th Jul, 2017 17:00
Historic, Modern & Contemporary Art
138
George Pemba (South Africa 1912-2001)
On the bus
oil on canvas board
Artwork date: 1974
Signature details: signed and dated
Sold for R363,776
Estimated at R280,000 - R340,000
oil on canvas board
Artwork date: 1974
Signature details: signed and dated
(1)
49.5 x 74.5 cm
Acquired from the artist.
Notes:
It was Gerard Sekoto who advised George Pemba to switch to oil painting and to broaden his subject matter from portraits to scenes describing township life. Pemba was on a trip to Cape Town in 1942 when he met this fellow pioneer of South African painting. Sekoto, who went into exile in 1947, was later to describe himself, John Koenakeefe Mohl, Pemba and Gerard Benghu as the ‘thirties generation’ of South African artists (Hudleston 1996: 39).Pemba also expressed a desire to live and work in Paris and London, but was never able to, due to family responsibilities. Instead, he stayed home and faced the music as apartheid intensified over the following decades. He ‘survived riots, family deaths, detentions and almost constant poverty’, but never stopped painting (Hudleston 1996: 14). Although he didn’t become actively involved in politics, he expressed his outrage and struggles through paintings like this one, which depicts the kinds of everyday characters one would encounter on a regular bus journey home.Although the mood is bleak – with the windows of the bus murky and cracked, the child remonstrating in his mother’s arms and the young boy in the foreground slouching in boredom – a golden light shines through, illuminating the red shirt of the young woman with her grocery basket and picking up on a detail in the jacket of the dutiful working woman with her black umbrella and hat.As a definitive work of South African documentary realism, this painting prefigures photographer David Goldblatt’s 1989 series, The Transported of KwaNdebele, in which he documented workers on their daily commute to and from Pretoria, leaving as early at 2.45am and returning as late as ten at night. Depicting an earlier era, Pemba’s painting is bathed in a Modernist aura of post-Victorian dignity and stoicism.
Alexandra Dodd
Sources:
Hudleston, S. (1996) Against All Odds. Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball.
You can place an absentee bid through our website - please sign in to your account on our website to proceed.
In the My Account tab you can also enter telephone bids, or email bids@aspireart.net to log telephone/absentee bids.
Join us on the day of the auction to follow and bid in real-time.
The auction will be live-streamed with an audio-visual feed.
Auction: Historic, Modern & Contemporary Art, 17th Jul, 2017
Aspire Art Auctions’ second Johannesburg sale offered a selection of some of the best works produced by local and international artists available on the local market. Offerings included Cameroonian-born, Belgium-based, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Chilean, Eugenio Dittborn, and South Africans, William Kentridge, Kendell Geers, Louis Maqhubela, Cecil Skotnes, Maggie Laubser, Irma Stern, and Mohau Modisakeng, amongst others.
The sale was led by an international auction record of R1 200 320 achieved for a drawing, Children under Apartheid, by exiled South African artist Dumile Feni, as well as the successful sale of top international lot Golden Mask by renowned performance artist Marina Abramović.
Viewing
Friday 14 July 2017 | 10 am – 7 pm
Saturday 15 July 2017 | 10 am – 5 pm
Sunday 16 July 2017 | 10 am – 4 pm
HIGHLIGHTS
Currency conversions are based on the exchange rate at the auction's start time and date. Bidders should verify the current exchange rate on the day of the sale. All invoices and payments must be made in South African Rands.
IMPORTANT NOTICE:
Logistics
While we endeavour to assist our Clients as much as possible, we require artwork(s) to be delivered and/or collected from our premises by the Client. In instances where a Client is unable to deliver or collect artwork(s), Aspire staff is available to assist in this process by outsourcing the services to one of our preferred Service Providers. The cost for this will be for the Client’s account, with an additional Handling Fee of 15% charged on top of the Service Provider’s invoice.
Aspire Art provides inter-company transfer services for its Clients between Johannesburg and Cape Town branches. These are based on the size of the artwork(s), and charged as follows:
Small (≤60x90x10 cm): R480
Medium (≤90x120x15 cm): R960
Large (≤120x150x20 cm): R1,440
Over-size: Special quote
Should artwork(s) be collected or delivered to/from Clients by Aspire Art directly, the following charges will apply:
Collection/delivery ≤20km: R400
Collection/delivery 20km>R800≤50km
Collection/delivery >50km: Special quote
Packaging
A flat fee of R100 will be added to the invoice for packaging of unframed works on paper.
International Collectors Shipping Package
For collectors based outside South Africa who purchase regularly from Aspire Art’s auctions in South Africa, it does not make sense to ship artworks individually or per auction and pay shipping every time you buy another work. Consequently, we have developed a special collectors’ shipping package to assist in reducing shipping costs and the constant demands of logistics arrangements.
For buyers from outside South Africa, we will keep the artworks you have purchased in storage during the year and then ship all the works you have acquired during the year together, so the shipping costs are reduced. At the end of the annual period, we will source various quotes to get you the best price, and ship all your artworks to your desired address at once.
Aspire Art will arrange suitable storage during, and cost-effective shipping at the end, of the annual period.
Collections
Collections are by appointment, with 24-hours’ notice
Clients are requested to contact the relevant office and inform Aspire Art of which artwork(s) they would like to collect, and allow a 24-hour window for Aspire Art’s logistics department to retrieve the artwork(s) and prepare them for collection.
Handling Fee
Aspire Art charges a 15% Handling Fee on all Logistics, Framing, Restoration and Conservation arranged by Aspire.