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JOHANNES PETRUS MEINTJES (SOUTH AFRICAN ARTIST 1923 - 1980)
Meintjes is a master at interpreting poetic nostalgia... characterised by technical excellence (Alexander Podlashuc, Oosterlig 1980)
There you have all the loneliness of youth (Judith Gluckman)
PORTRAIT OF A BOY - SIGNED AND DATED 1960
Provenance:
A magnificent work of art from the collection of the late Mr Hannes & Mrs Gnidia van Rooij (first owners and friends of Meintjes)
Size: approx 320 x 240 mm
Listed as JM number 678 (1960) on the Johannes Meintjes Archival website
Below: The painting on exhibition at the 1990 RAU/UJ Johannes Meintjes Prestige Memorial Exhibition (catalogue number 43)
Also exhibited at the Schweickerdt Art Gallery (Pretoria) from 3 to 15 March 1961, catalogue number 17
The record for an oil painting by Meintjes is R668,400.00, achieved on 8 October 2012 at Strauss & Company, Cape Town.
Please add R140 (PostNet) to your payment (South Africa) & please arrange insurance as may be required.
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Johannes Petrus Meintjes (1923-1980) was a South African painter that enjoyed tremendous public support for his art since early age and also received international acclaim as an author later on. He is a well known historian and one of South Africa's most versatile artists. The fame he enjoyed as a 21 year old artist is unequalled in the South African history of art. Esmé Berman wrote in her authoritative Art & Artists of South Africa that 'the spectacular suddenness with which Johannes Meintjes catapulted to the headlines during the last years of WW2 is a phenomenon seldom equalled in SA cultural history. Before he was 22 years old the intense young artist enjoyed the kind of public adulation which was later reserved for youthful idols of the pop-music world'.
Johannes Meintjes died in 1980 and had established himself as a major South African painter and writer. Apart from numerous articles and smaller literary works, he had published 35 books, amongst them authoritative works on South African history. Some of his fictional works are considered of historical GLBT interest and early examples of South African gay writing.
Meintjes had painted more than a thousand canvases, produced dozens of sculptures and exhibited in all South Africa's major galleries - sometimes alone and sometimes in the company of artists such as Alexis Preller, JH Pierneef, Gerard Sekoto, Irma Stern, Maggie Laubser and Walter Battiss.
Meintjes' work reflects something of the naivety of the African artist… a dimension beyond the purely European and his canvases, painted with the knowledge born out of centuries of European experience, speak with the voice of Africa.
Meintjes once said: 'Mine is the vision…sprung from the soil of Africa and I have given it in a personal statement which may find a response in the heart and imagination of another generation.'
Below: Johannes Meintjes (in 1944 at age 21), art lecturer at the SA College School (the artist Peter Clarke on his left)
Below: Johannes Meintjes (1947 at age 24) on the opening night of his exhibition at the Argus Gallery in Cape Town (June 1947)
Below : Johannes Meintjes' studio in Buitengracht Street, Cape Town 1949
Below : Johannes Meintjes in 1952 (exhibition in Port Elizabeth; front page of 'The Evening Post')
The correct spelling of his surname is 'Johannes Meintjes' (and not 'Johannes Meintjies') XKOST
