Christo Coetzee

Christo Coetzee (24 March 1929 – 12 November 2000) was a South African assemblage and Neo-Baroque artist closely associated with the avant-garde art movements of Europe and Japan during the 1950s and 1960s.

Christo Coetzee was born on 24 March 1929 at 54 Biccard Street, Turfontein, Johannesburg to Josef Adriaan Coetzee and Francina Sofia Kruger (1888-1964) (who claimed to be a relation of President Paul Kruger).

The family had been farming in the Colesberg district, but were forced by drought and the dilution of income by a large number of sons on the Coetzee family farm, Strydpoort, to seek an income in the rich mining economy of the Witwatersrand some time before Christo's birth.

Christo's father developed a lung condition colloquially referred to as miners' phthisis and moved to the building industry, where a talent for drawing became evident.

Christo would later attribute his artistic talents to his father and his business acumen to his mother.

Christo's father died in 1939 and he was raised by his mother and two sisters, Gertruida (20 years his senior) and Johanna (16 years older).

Christo attended Parkview Primary School and then Parktown Boys' High School, where he became an enthusiastic art student.

In the years 1946 to 1950 he attended the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), where his fellow students were Larry Scully, Cecil Skotnes, Esmé Berman, Nel Erasmus, Ruth Allen (Furness), Gordon Vorster, Anna Vorster and Gerda Meyer (Eloff).

With Scully, Skotnes, Vorster and Erasmus, he would become part of the so-called Wits group, a loosely knit group better known for their subsequent careers than any coherent aesthetic philosophy.

At Wits Christo designed decor and costumes for drama productions.

Influential teachers were Charles Argent, Maria Stein-Lessing, Heather Martienssen, and Marjorie Long, who would become his first wife.

After graduation from Wits with a degree in fine art in 1951, Christo Coetzee had his first solo exhibition in January of that year.

This exhibition was opened by South African National Gallery director John Paris, and featured portraits in Victorian daguerrotype style.

A Wits scholarship took him to London in 1951 to study at the Slade School of Art under Prof. William Coldstream.

The following year, Coetzee and Marjorie Long married in Hammersmith, London and set off to Spain for a honeymoon of several months in the coastal town of Benidorm in Alicante.

The interest of Cape Town art dealer Louis Schachat was peaked and it became his occupation to acquire Christo's work from this period and the 1951 exhibition.

Under the influence of art theorist Michel Tapié, art dealer Rodolphe Stadler and art collector and photographer Anthony Denney, as well as the Gutai group of Japan, he developed his oeuvre alongside those of artists strongly influenced by Tapié's Un Art Autre (1952), such as Georges Mathieu, Alfred Wols, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, Antoni Tàpies and Lucio Fontana.

After her return to South Africa, he spent another six months in London, before returning to Johannesburg at the beginning of 1953.

He was soon occupied with mundane office work, first for the South African Railways, then at Wits, briefly enlivened by an exhibition of small oil paintings at the Lawrence Adler Gallery in Johannesburg.

On 6 November 1953, Coetzee was again on his way to London, spurred by a travel lust that would lead to the dissolution of his marriage with Long.

She would never again join him abroad.

This time without a sponsor, he took an administrative position at a tobacco company, but found it wanting.

He enquired at Gimpel Fils, where Peter and Ernest Gimpel (nephews of Lord Duveen) recommended taking a position at the framing business of Robert Savage, where, indeed, Coetzee found a more rewarding position.

It was during this time that he took a painting to Gillian Ayres at the Artists' International Association (AIA), who in turn showed it to photographer and stylist Anthony Denney, who bought the painting immediately for £12.

Denney invited Coetzee to dinner at his home at St Peter's Square 30, Hammersmith, where he found his painting hung above a work by Antoni Clavé.

It was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

In 1954 Christo took up a room in Denney's home, paying the rent with paintings.

Denney owned about ten works from this period.

Anthony Denney arranged for Coetzee to exhibit at Hanover Gallery in March 1955.

The gallery had a reputation for presenting challenging modern artists and alumni included Francis Bacon, Graham Sutherland, Alberto Giacometti, Lucian Freud, William Scott and Henry Moore.

This was his first solo exhibition abroad, coincidentally in the same year as Richard Hamilton would have his first solo at the gallery, run at the time by Erica Brausen and supported financially by Max Aitken, son of Lord Beaverbrook.

The proceedings were observed by Loelia, Duchess of Westminster.

Coetzee's exhibition consisted of 51 portraits and still life paintings.

According to Coetzee, Denney paid £100 for Pompeian lobster and smaller paintings were sold at £50 each.

In 1956 Coetzee and Australian Sidney Nolan received a bursary from the Italian government, through mediation of the British Council, for a four-month sojourn in Italy.

With an introductory letter from Erica Brausen to Pavel Tchelitchew, he set off to Frascati in January of that year.

He met Alberto Burri in Rome, visited the Rome Quadriennale, and arranged the purchase of Burri's Tutto Nero for Anthony Denney's collection.

Later, in pilgrimage, he visited Peggy Guggenheim at her home in Venice and remembered vividly the glass and metal gate of American artist Claire Falkenstein.

Other buyers were Sandy and Bunny Roger, who purchased two works (sold by Sotheby's in 1998), and Elizabeth David.

On 26 October 2011, Bonham's, the auction house, sold one of these, Fabergé egg, from the collection of Max Aitken, purchased on his behalf by Le Roux Smith Le Roux, for £13,750 (inclusive of buyer's premium).