Naby Visrivier Afgrond
Note : Erik Laubscher was mentored by an esteemed group of artists, including painter Maurice van Essche in Cape Town, critic John Berger and painter Frank Slater, a student of Walter Sickert, in late-1940s London, and painters Fernand Léger and Bernard Buffet in Paris thereafter. Laubscher only discovered the South African landscape, for many his career-defining subject, after a period of adjustment following his return to Cape Town in 1951. It was a trip to the Bushman’s River near Kenton-on-Sea that set him off on his decades-spanning journey describing as much as transforming the landscape with a paintbrush. Laubscher once described the challenge he set himself as creating the illusion of the landscape having continuing vastness and the painting being part of the whole, instead of something complete and contained.1 Naby Visrivier Afgrond dates from a period of intensive travel and painting, which culminated in a well-received solo show at Cape Town's Association of Arts Gallery. The paintings from this period balance factual description with mythical statement. I've never thought in terms of seeing a scene and thinking ah ... ja ... that will make a nice picture. The painting has to evoke the monumental feeling that really does exist in Africa.2 Laubscher's paintings were often informed by camping trips. He ranged across many parts of the Cape region, asking farmers if he could set up camp and paint. He also visited the Fish River Canyon in southern Namibia, as represented here.
Jeremy A. Foster. (2008) Washed with Sun: Landscape and the Making of White South Africa, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Page 296.
Hans Fransen. (2009) Erik Laubscher: A Life in Art, Cape Town: SMAC. Page 265.
