When Irma Stern first exhibited in Cape Town in the 1920s, critics were shocked. Her paintings used bright, bold colours and distorted forms, influenced by German expressionism. Some reviewers called them ugly. Within a few decades, she was recognised as one of South Africa’s most important artists. Stern travelled widely in Africa, painting people in Zanzibar, the Congo and elsewhere. Her portraits are now among the most valuable South African paintings ever sold, though they also raise questions about how a white artist portrayed Black subjects.
Early life and Zanzibar
Stern was born in 1894 in the Transvaal to German-Jewish parents. She studied art in Germany, where she was influenced by expressionist painters. She returned to South Africa and settled in Cape Town. Her first exhibitions drew harsh reviews from critics unused to modern art. She travelled to Zanzibar, the Congo and other parts of Africa, painting the people she met.
Her paintings from Zanzibar include portraits of Arab and Swahili men and women, framed in carved Zanzibari doors.
The Congo, style and prices
Her Congo paintings depict people, markets and scenes from her journeys. Her style is marked by vivid colour, thick paint and strong lines. Her paintings have set auction records for South African art. Some critics argue that her portraits romanticised Africans in ways shaped by colonial ideas. Others praise their energy and humanity. Her home in Rondebosch, Cape Town, is now the Irma Stern Museum.
Stern died in 1966. She is remembered as a pioneer of modern art in South Africa.
Collecting and influence
Stern was also a collector. She brought back carvings, textiles and other objects from her travels, and many of them are displayed at her former home alongside her paintings. Visitors to the museum can see how the objects she collected influenced the colours and patterns in her work. Younger South African artists visited her studio, and her bold use of colour encouraged others to break with the conservative styles that dominated local art in her early years.
She exhibited in Europe as well as in South Africa, building an international reputation. The critics who called Stern’s paintings ugly in the 1920s would not have believed the prices they fetch today.
