Foreign buyers flock to Cape Town's thriving arts scene

Collectors from America and Europe are exploring Cape Town's burgeoning art scene in search of offerings as diverse as an Irma expressive oil painting. Stern of South Africa or a sculpture made from bottle caps by El Anatsui of 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 about 106 million rand ($ 7.3 million) worth of art, including commissions … which is a record for South Africa and for Africa as a continent, "said Frank Kilbourn, executive chairman of the sales house Strauss and Co." This bodes extremely well for 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 took the top three places in terms of value, with the highest bidder paying just over 20 million rand 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.

Precious Mhone, co-curator of a multidisciplinary exhibition of African artists, is among the works on display at the Zeitz Africa Contemporary Art Museum in Cape Town, South Africa on March 18, 2019. / Reuters Photo

Precious Mhone, co-curator of a multidisciplinary exhibition of African artists, is among the works on display at the Zeitz Africa Contemporary Art Museum in Cape Town, South Africa on March 18, 2019. / Reuters Photo

Kilbourn said local buyers had bought Stern's works, despite strong foreign competition.

"We have credible auction houses and an excellent gallery system and the world is realizing now that we have become major," he said. "It's a great place to look at art and buy art."

Among the many contemporary works on offer are engravings and drawings by South African William Kentridge, who exhibited in New York and Paris, as well as surrealist paintings by former prisoner-turned-artist Blessing Ngobeni.

The potential value of investments from some of the continent's historic art figures and a favorable dollar-rand exchange rate also attract foreign buyers, said Kilbourn, adding that the South African art market is Roughly 2 to 3 billion rand 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. United.

"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 world's largest museum of contemporary African art, has helped spark interest in Africa's rich artistic heritage. .

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

"There are all these spaces that talk about different forms of artistic practice and thus enrich the Cape Town art scene."