Christo Coetzee (South Africa 1929-2000), Abstract
Provenance : [Propriété non datée]
- Private collection, Cape Town
Exhibited :
Literature :
Notes : Christo Coetzee was an enigmatic talent at the cutting edge of international thought and art movements. After leaving South Africa in 1951 on a scholarship for postgraduate studies, he worked and exhibited extensively in London, Paris, Milan, Japan and Spain. The aesthetic theories of French critic Michel Tapié, Lucio Fontana and in particular the Gutai Group with whom he worked in Japan during 1959, had a profound influence on his work by providing a framework for his intuitive and organic approach to the creative process. Coetzee extended his own aesthetic boundaries and challenged with confidence what was deemed possible in painting. He experimented with imagery, pictorial space, texture, colour and form. His adventurous use of materials and found objects with thick paint and sand emphasised his intense involvement with materiality while having no interest in the associative value of both the subjects and objects he chose. COLLECTOR’S NOTES • Since the 1950s, Christo Coetzee’s artistic achievements have been linked to the international avant-garde movements of Art Informel, Neo-Baroque and Assemblage art. In 1961, his work was included in the seminal exhibition; The Art of Assemblage presented by the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).• From the late 1960s onwards, his work formed an important part of the vanguard movement in South African art. • Christo Coetzee’s third and final retrospective was held at the University of Stellenbosch in 1999. In 2009, his work was central in the exhibition in Dada South? at the Iziko South African National Gallery in Cape Town. COLLECTIONS: The artist is represented in numerous local and international collections, notably, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton; Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan; International Centre for Aesthetic Research, Turin; Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town and the Javett Art Centre, Pretoria.
Condition_report : The overall condition is very good. Minor chips measuring less than 1cm, on each corner of the board.
