Foreign buyers flock to Cape Town's thriving arts scene

Collectors from America and Europe explore Cape Town's burgeoning art scene in search of contracts as diverse as Irma Stern's expressive oil painting from South Africa or a sculpture made from capsules bottles of El Anatsui from Ghana.

Dozens of sites, including the Association of Visual Arts Gallery and the converted grain silos of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art (MOCAA), welcome aficionados in search of a good investment and the General public.

At a busy auction on Monday, auctions hit new heights as collectors phoned as far as Chile and Canada competing against each other.

"We sold for about $ 7.3 million worth of art, including commission …, which is a record for South Africa and for Africa as a continent" said Frank Kilbourn, executive chairman of the Strauss and Co. sales house the future of African and South African art. "

More than 600 lots were sold and a wide range of items was offered: Chinese and Japanese ceramics to the works of South African heavyweights Stern, Gerard Sekoto and Alexis Preller.

Stern's paintings occupy the top three places in terms of value, with the highest bidder paying just over $ 1.4 million for the "Arab" portrait. The painting, still in its original carved wooden frame, is a portrait of a noble Omani man from the Zanzibar Sultanate court, who had never been registered before.

Mr. Kilbourn said that local buyers had seized Stern's works despite strong foreign competition.

"We have credible auction houses and an excellent gallery system and the world is now seeing that we are reaching the age of maturity," he said. "It's a good place to look at art and buy art."

Among the many contemporary works on offer are engravings and drawings by William Kentridge (South Africa), who exhibited in New York and Paris, as well as the surrealist paintings of former artist Blessing Ngobeni, who became a prisoner.

The potential value of some of the continent's historic art figures and a favorable dollar-rand exchange rate is also attracting foreign buyers, said Kilbourn, adding that the art market in South Africa is valued between 140 and $ 211 million a year.

"Americans and Europeans are without a doubt the biggest buyers of African art or South African art," said Darren Julien, General Manager of Julien's Auctions, based in the United States.

"I am confident that the Chinese will follow soon, as they are generally in the popular collection markets."

The launch of Zeitz MOCAA last year in Cape Town, billed as the largest museum of contemporary African art in the world, has helped spark interest in Africa's rich artistic heritage.

"It becomes this port (…) to experience the rest of the continent, a way to get in," said Precious Mhone, co-curator of a multidisciplinary exhibition of African artists at MOCAA.

"There are all these spaces that speak of different forms of artistic practice and thus have (this) enriched only the Cape art scene."

Source: Reuters