R400,000 - R500,000
Jean Welz (South African 1900 - 1975) THE POET
signed
oil on canvas
60 by 45cm
Jean Welz was born in Salzburg, Austria. The future artist pursued his
studies in Paris and Vienna, whereafter he relocated to South Africa to work
in the Department of Architecture at Wits University. Following a bout of
poor health he was advised in 1938 to move to the dry Karoo environment
where he commenced to practice fulltime as an artist. At the onset of 1943,
Welz and his family moved to Worcester where they settled in the former
home of the artist Hugo Naudé.
Welz was known for his meticulous skills and refined approach to his work,
as well as his knowledge outside the borders of fine art in the fields of
literature, philosophy and history. When Welz applied his artistic talent
to produce a drawing or a portrait, he sought to capture veiled, invisible
qualities, which he identified within his subjects. His subsequent renderings
convey these distinct elements on paper and canvas.
He was commissioned by the South African Academy for Science and
Arts to do portraits of well-known writers and poets of the day, including
W.E.G. Louw, N.P. van Wyk Louw, Elisabeth Eybers and Uys Krige among
others, and this may well have informed the creation of The Poet(1). In the
painting Welz has invented a means of suggesting handicap as well as
intuitive wisdom. The wand infers blindness, while the subtle gesture of the
subject’s right hand reveals an imagined narration presented with empathy.
These identities can be associated with a theatrical performance. This
portrait depicts Welz’s typical style through surface construction, where
the soft light merges into darker shadows towards the background. He
depicts balanced lighting through the tonal contrast of the wand in the
subject’s left hand. Art historian Elza Miles described the painting as the
exploration of Welz’s quest to use art in order to denote poetic instances.
- Fred Scott, Walker Scott Art Advisory
1. Elza Miles. (1997). The World of Jean Welz. Cape Town, Fernwood Press. Pages 86 and 110.
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