THE LANDSCAPES A SELECTION OF WORKS FROM 1946 – 2012

ERIK LAUBSCHER

“When I was working at Sam Newman’s, selling paint, I became deeply involved in various art organisations, and I didn’t have a chance to get out and see things, so the paintings got more abstract. Edoardo Villa was making big ripples and our work became more aggressive and spiky, which could be related to the whole political atmosphere…So you find that, in some of my paintings, the use of free forms expresses human emotions. I was very conscious that a painting mustn’t date, in the sense that the subject matter illustrates a certain event. I’ve tried to avoid that throughout. The paintings are the important thing and I hope that they can be seen in a timeless context. That is why, when I had to spend five-and-a-half days behind a counter selling paint, but I still wanted to paint, my work started to shift to pure abstraction, towards an expression of one’s angst at the time. And it was only when, in the 1960s, I worked for Plascon and travelled the Western Cape, that I suddenly became aware of the shapes of the wheat-fields in an abstract sense and of new colour combinations.”1

- Erik Laubscher

1 Hans Franzen, (2009) Erik Laubscher: A Life in Art, Stellenbosch: SMAC. Page 264

“His experience is located in the expanses of the South African landscape where it is possible, as it were, to breathe freely – [both] in his sensory perception of it and on the canvas.”1

When Laubscher returned to South Africa in 1950 from France he became known for his “bold use of glowing and resonant colour…and the capacity to absorb the influence of contemporary masters without being mesmerized by their personal idiosyncrasies…”2 . His still life compositions, in which he acknowledged the influence of Bernard Buffet, were exhibited alongside the works of the more established New Group in Cape Town.

It was during a holiday to Bushman’s River Mouth in 1953 that Laubscher began drawing the local Euphorbia forests3. Deciding that pencil was not suited to the subject, he used a charcoal of his own manufacture. It was these drawings that created the framework for the body of works (fig.1) which signaled the breakaway from the eloquent but Eurocentric post-Paris still lifes. It was also here that Laubscher made his first strides towards abstraction by filling in spaces between the foliage with flat planes of pure colour.

1 http://www.johansborman.co.za/artist-biographies/laubscher-erik/ 2 Hans Franzen, (2009) Erik Laubscher: A Life in Art, Stellenbosch: SMAC. Page 50 3 Ibid. Page 534 Ibid. Page 76

The landscapes of the 1950s through to the 1970s, varied in their application of abstraction, clearly showed Laubscher’s assimilation of the Surrealist strategy adopted by Fernand Leger. The visual language applied by Laubscher of weighing contrasting planes against one another, in order to achieve a state of orderly intensity, were applied in representational forms as well as abstract compositions. One of the works which Laubscher sent to the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1959 (fig.2) was described as a “landmark”4 piece. In this work, simply titled Composition, strong black forms are laid over other more colourful shapes. Rather than overpowering, they provide additional viewpoints and miniature landscapes within the composition. This heralded the starting point of his “Hard Edge” landscapes which were to dominate his output for the following two decades.

For a period of fifteen years Laubscher juggled his role as artist with that of paint salesman. He worked for the Plascon paint company between 1955 and 1970 and while he admitted this infringed on his creative output he also acknowledged that it provided him and his family with the financial security his art was not able to do at that time. It was also this employment which saw him frequent the roads to small towns and familiarize himself with the landscape of the Klein Karoo, Cedarberg, Swartland and surrounds. These trips, coupled with family camping holidays, afforded Laubscher new visual stimulation. The patchwork of farmers’ crops, dirt roads, power line punctuations, the surreal intensity of the colours and the undulation of the landscape (fig 4) interspersed with man-made interjections became meditative spaces which Laubscher then translated to canvas.

This exhibition of his works at EBONY/CURATED came together in order to fulfill one of Laubscher’s wishes - a review of his landscapes spanning his career as an artist.

5O YEARS OF LANDSCAPES- PHILLIPPA DUNCAN

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1946BLUE GUMS - PORT ELIZABETH, 1946, OIL ON BOARD, 53CM X 40CM

1948 CAMDEN HILL, LONDON, 1948, OIL ON CANVAS, 44CM X 60CM

1954EUPHORBIAS, 1954, CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 38CM X 28CM

1955EUPHORBIAS, 1955, CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 38CM X 27.5CM

1956EUPHORBIAS, 1956, OIL ON PANEL, 102CM X 88CM

1957 BOLAND WINTER, 1957, OIL ON BOARD, 79CM X 102CM

1958CONSTRUCTION SITE, 1958 - 2005, OIL ON BOARD, 106CM X 80CM

1959 COMPOSITION, 1959, OIL ON CANVAS, 86CM X 116CM

1959 TREE FORMS, 1959 - 1961, OIL ON BOARD, 99CM X 86CM

1963 LANDSCAPE WITH SHAPES, 1963 - 2005, ACRYLIC ON BOARD, 96CM X 122CM

1963 LATE WINTER SUNSET, 1963, OIL ON BOARD, 95CM X 121CM

1964 OVERBERG LANDERYE, 1964, OIL ON CANVAS, 68CM X 151CM

1967 LANDSCAPE, 1967, PASTEL ON PAPER, 55.5CM X 87CM

1967 SPRING, 1967, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 110CM X 122CM

1968 NEAR RIEBEEK KASTEEL, 1968, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 118CM X 118CM

1969 SPRING LANDSCAPE, 1969, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 51CM X 48CM

1969 LANDSCAPE WITH CHURCH STEEPLE, 1969, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 152CM X 117CM

1970 DESIGN FOR NICO MALAN TAPESTRY, 1970, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 177CM X 76CM

1971 CONFRONTATION, 1971, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, 152CM X 153CM

1974 PIKETBERG, 1974, WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER, 20CM X 29CM

1976 SAND DUNES, 1976, WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER, 27CM X 37CM

1978 LANDSCAPE, 1978, CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 56CM X 76CM

1983 SWARTLAND, 1983, WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER, 14CM X 20CM

1985 TURBULENCE OVER LIONS HEAD, 1985, OIL ON CANVAS, 88CM X 122CM

1986 GREAT ROCK TANDJIESKOPPE - NAMIBIA, 1986, OIL ON CANVAS, 101CM X 125CM

1986 GUARDIANS OF THE KOUEBOKKEVELD, 1986, OIL ON CANVAS, 103CM X 199CM

1987 ROCKS, GRASS, 1987, CHARCOAL ON PAPER, 52CM X 65CM

1988 HIGH WINDS OVER TABLE BAY, 1988, OIL ON CANVAS, 103CM X 119CM

1991 LANDSCAPE, 1991, WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER, 12.5CM X 18.5CM

1993 LANDSCAPE, 1993, WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER, 28CM X 37.5CM

1993 NAMIBIAN ALTAR, 1993, ETCHING ON PAPER, ED.1/50, 30CM X 39CM

1993STORM SKY NAMIBIA, 1993, ETCHING ON PAPER, AP.II, ED.50, 39CM X 30CM

1993STORM SKY NAMIBIA, 1993, HANDCOLOURED ETCHING ON PAPER, ED.50/50, 39CM X 30CM

1995 ON SITE SKETCH: KEURFONTEIN, 1995, PENCIL ON PAPER, 19CM X 31CM

1996 LANDSCAPE, 1996, WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER, 15CM X 22CM

1998 STORM CLOUDS (KLEIN KAROO), 1998 - 2000, OIL ON CANVAS, 107CM X 156CM

2009 WINTER WHEATFIELDS, 2009, OIL ON CANVAS, 100CM X 110CM

2009 WINTER LANDERYE - RIVIERSONDEREND, 2009, OIL ON CANVAS, 53CM X 64CM

2012 WINTER CLOUD OVERBERG, 2012, OIL ON CANVAS, 86CM X 116CM

2012 DARK CLOUD, 2012, OIL ON CANVAS, 46CM X 55CM

TREES IN NEWLANDS FOREST, WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER, 28CM X 38CM

STOMPIESFONTEIN KOUEBOKKEVELD, WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER, 28CM X 38CM

STOMPIESFONTEIN, WATERCOLOUR ON PAPER, 25.5CM X 37CM

SEASCAPE (THE STORM), OIL ON PANEL, 111CM X 138CM

THIS BOOK IS PUBLISHED TO COINCIDE WITH ERIK LAUBSCHER ‘THE LANDSCAPES:

A SELECTION OF WORKS FROM 1946 – 2012’ EBONY, BORDEAUX HOUSE, FRANSCHHOEK28TH OCTOBER 2017 - 7TH JANUARY 2018.

© ESTATE FBE LAUBSCHER

WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK IZIKO MUSEUMS OF SOUTH AFRICA FOR THE LOAN OF “BOLAND WINTER”, A WORK FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION OF THE IZIKO SOUTH AFRICAN NATIONAL GALLERY.

PHOTOGRAPHY: MARC STANES AND LES HAMMOND PG 17: ‘BOLAND WINTER’, IMAGE COURTESY OF IZIKO MUSEUMS

(PHOTO TAKEN BY NIGEL PAMPLIN)

FOREWORD: PHILLIPPA DUNCAN

DESIGN & LAYOUT: SAM WROTH RIETMANN

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