Irma Stern

Irma Stern
Born	Irma Analize Stern (1894-10-02)2 October 1894 Schweizer-Reneke, Transvaal
Died	23 August 1966(1966-08-23) (aged 71) Cape Town, South Africa
Known for	Painting
Spouse	Johannes Prinz ​ ​ (m. 1926; div. 1934)​

Irma Stern (2 October 1894 – 23 August 1966) was a South African artist who achieved national and international recognition in her lifetime.

Life

Stern was born in

leanings. Irma and her younger brother, Rudi, were thus taken to Cape Town by their mother. In 1901, the family returned to Germany and later would constantly travel between South Africa and Germany. This travel also influenced Irma's development as an artist.

In 1913 Stern studied art in Germany at the Weimar Academy, in 1914 at the Levin-Funcke Studio^[1] and notably from 1917 with Max Pechstein, a founder of the Novembergruppe. Stern was associated with the German Expressionist painters of this period.^[2] She held her first exhibition in Berlin in 1919. In 1920 Stern returned to Cape Town with her family, where she was first derided and dismissed as an artist before later becoming an established artist by the 1940s.

In 1926 Stern married Johannes Prinz, her former tutor, who subsequently became professor of German at the University of Cape Town. They were divorced in 1934.

Irma Stern travelled extensively in Europe and explored southern Africa,

from 1933 to 1945. These expeditions resulted in a wealth of artistic creativity and energy as well as the publication of two illustrated journals: Congo, published in 1943 and Zanzibar in 1948.

Reception

Almost one hundred solo exhibitions were held during her lifetime both in South Africa and Europe, including Germany, France, Italy and England. Although accepted in Europe, her work was unappreciated at first in South Africa, where critics derided her early exhibitions in the 1920s with reviews titled such as "Art of Miss Irma Stern - Ugliness as a cult".^[citation needed]

The Irma Stern Museum was established in 1971 and is the house the artist lived in for almost four decades. She moved into The Firs in Rondebosch in 1927 and lived there until her death. Several of the rooms are furnished as she arranged them while upstairs there is a commercial gallery used by contemporary South African artists.

On 8 May 2000, one of her works sold at Sotheby's South Africa in Johannesburg for an all-time record of R1.7 million.^[3] This record was soon broken, however, and in March 2007, her 1936 Portrait of an Indian woman was sold for R6.6 million.^[4] Stern's Gladioli was sold for an all-time high of R13.3 million in October 2010,^[5] but was then followed by the sale of Bahora Girl for R26.7 million later that month^[6] - both were also records for sales of South African art at the time. A new South African record was set in March 2011, when a Stern painting sold for R34 million at Bonhams, London.^{[citation needed]}

On 11 November 2012, Stern's painting Fishing Boats was stolen along with four other paintings from a museum in

From 3 November 2021 to 1 August 2022, the Norval Foundation gallery in Cape Town presented important paintings produced by Irma Stern during her two stays in Zanzibar during the period of 1939 to 1945, and commented on these works as follows:[8]

Her heavily-laden brush deposits swathes of colour and a tracery of mark that evokes at times the sweep and syncopation of Islamic calligraphy. The calligraphy that she encountered in the carved cartouches of the lintels of Zanzibari doors and the Islamic manuscripts which she collected, armed and liberated her mark-making. The boldness of her impasto brushwork results in a tangible embodiment of her sitters and their contexts, such that her decision to frame the works using fragments of Zanzibari doors feels completely in keeping.

— Norval Foundation, Cape Town, The Zanzibari Years: Irma Stern

Gallery

• 
  Still life with African pot, Johans Borman Fine Art Gallery, Cape Town 1936
• 
  The golden shawl. Oil on canvas. 1945. Iziko South African National Gallery
• 
  Pomegranate seller in Zanzibar, Oil on canvas, with Zanzibari carved frame, Norval Foundation, Cape Town

Bibliography

• At home with Irma Stern: A guidebook to the UCT Irma Stern Museum, by Helene Smuts
  ISBN 978-0-620-39702-5
• Hidden Treasures: Irma Stern – Her Books, Painted Book Covers and Bookplates, by
  ISBN 0-620-26727-5
• Irma Stern: A Feast for the Eye, by Marion Arnold
  ISBN 0-620-19014-0
• Irma Stern and the Racial Paradox of South African Modern Art: Audacities of Color, by
  ISBN 978-1-350-18749-8
• Irma Stern: The Early Years (1894–1933), by Karel Schoeman
  ISBN 0-86968-112-5
• Paradise, the Journal and Letters (1917–1933) of Irma Stern Edited with a Commentary, by Neville Dubow
  ISBN 1-874812-08-X
• Remembering Irma: Irma Stern: A Memoir with Letters.
  ISBN 1-919930-27-2

References

External links

• Irma Stern Museum