Title: Abstract
Medium: Oil on canvas
Signed
Unframed: 25cm x 51cm
Framed: 43cm x 66.5cm
While exhibiting a collection of South African art with the International Art Club in Turin, Italy in 1949, Walter Battiss had his first meeting with Pablo Picasso and Gino Severini. Their theories on abstraction and futurism had a great influence on Battiss which helped establish modern art in South African.
What makes this painting, Abstract, so interesting is the very direct reference to Bushman rock art through the figures represented in the abstract expressionist landscape. Rock art led Battiss (Standard Bank Gallery 2005:17) “to a new understanding of rhythms (nervous, cataclysmal [Sic], passive, active, tractive, stubborn) to approach the morphology of forms through a primitive calligraphy suggesting in its amplitude the convex and concave volumes and destiny of living tissues…”
