Page 53 - Studio International - April 1967

major German cities. Africa gave her the impetus;
Europe showed its critical appreciation, summed
up by a sympathetic monograph by the critic Max
Osborn in the 51st edition of lunge Kunst (in
which incidentally Pechstein had formed the first
subject and Picasso the fiftieth).
To understand the nature of her involvement with
her art, one must come to terms with its essential
physicality. Unlike the majority of the members of
the German expressionist movement, she was not
an intellectual painter: she painted things rather
than concepts, substance rather than psyche, even
though the substance invariably brought out the
vital core underneath. To do this she required a
physical stimulus. Her life pattern was in many
ways a record of a series of journeyings in search of
stimuli strong enough to evoke an unstinted
response. These she was to find in the Congo,
which supplied the full-blooded exoticism she
craved, and most notably in Zanzibar, where in
the mid-'Forties she achieved the fullest realization
of her powers. As much as she had earlier re-
sponded to the ancient rhythms of African tribal
life, so did she yield even more completely to the
seductions of the spice island, where, shrewdly
aware of the intricate interweaving of Indian,
Arab and African racial groups and with as eager
an eye for a 'type' as before, she made a series of
paintings which in their fullness and richness of
treatment rank as the most assured and authorita-
tive of her entire output. In this mini-world of
turbanned sheiks and perfumed women, matching
the opulence of her surroundings with works of
unabashed sensuality and remarkable formal
strength, she found the mechanism to finally free
the romantic that always underlay the expressionist.
In a significant sense her painting was a fulfilment
of unrealized aspects of her life. There is no space
here to go into this fully. Suffice it to say that her
early background was one of strong parental
opposition to her chosen career; her personal re-
lationships, including a brief unfulfilled marriage,
were not invariably distinguished by their fruitful-
Irma Stern, Gaya 1948, oil ori canvas, 24 x 20 in.
ness. Her early struggles against a hostile South
African press which took her expressionist distortion life, it is impossible to escape the conclusion that sionist artist stands above all for 'mysticism, self-
for ineptness and her exuberance for unpardon- her painting offered her an outlet for all the examination, contemplation of the other-worldly
able licence, no less than her encounters with an blocked channels of emotion and a resolution for and speculation of the infinite', then she stands
indifferent and contemptuous public, left her her tremendous passion for self-expression. In her somewhat outside this pattern. For hers is a
embittered and suspicious. Her relations with her day-to-day contacts, her emotional reactions were peculiarly self-indulgent art: it drew breath from
fellow artists—and there were those who joined in often childlike. In her art, her emotions were Germany, fed on and became intoxicated with
the battle for modern art from the 'Thirties on- superbly liberated. The act of painting was for her Africa, and finally luxuriated in Southern Europe.
wards—were never amicable. an intense and concentrated ritual, and in this she Though an intensely cultivated person who
When at last success and recognition came she was able to summon up amazing resources of amassed an exceptional collection of African and
had a rather ambivalent attitude towards it. On energy and concentration. Though on stylistic Primitive carving, her outlook remained a cir-
the one hand she distrusted what she took to be grounds her influence on South African painters cumscribed one. Possibly had her intellectual
effusive flattery of the celebrity she had in fact was not as extensive as her position might indicate, horizons been wider her art would have reached
become. On the other, she bitterly resented any her importance as a liberating force in the develop- a profounder universal significance. But on its own
assessment which did not, in her opinion, give her ment of a now very vigorous indigenous art is terms, by virtue of its bravura and force, it has
full due. immense. She was unquestionably the major figure considerable value. Above all, it offers a splendid
In the light of all this it is interesting to examine in the pioneer generation of her country's artists. affirmation and enrichment of an area of human
the pattern of her themes. To a large extent these In a wider context her position is less easy to experience. That this area was a limited one with
are concerned with fertility, birth and regenera- assess. In the broad pattern of twentieth-century an intensely physical basis only serves to underline
tion: sowers, reapers, harvesters; nubile maidens; expressionism her work constitutes a divergent but its central dynamic—the celebration of the richness
wedding feasts; mothers suckling infants; still-lifes vigorous and self-centering eddy, rather than an of material existence. In this she was ceaselessly
of overflowing natural abundance; ravishing integral part of the movement's German main- inventive and genuinely creative. Her commitment
flowerpieces ; sensuous assemblies of fruit. An stream. to her art was total, her passion intense, and her
intensely physical person with a huge appetite for If, as Bernard Myers would have it, the expres- realization of it often memorable. q
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