Maggie Laubser

South African Art Library, C.Struik publishers, illustrated, landscape format, softcover, 64 pages, 8.6 cms x 24 cms, condition: very good.

Maggie Laubser was a South African painter and printmaker. She is generally considered, along with Irma Stern, to be responsible for the introduction of Expressionism to South Africa. Her work was initially met with derision by critics but has gained wide acceptance, and now she is regarded as an exemplary and quintessentially South African artist.

In 1924, Laubser returned to South Africa and settled at Oortmanspost. She met sculptor Moses Kottler and the cartoonist D. C. Boonzaier, who introduced her to his son Gregoire, founding member of the New Group, and renewed her friendship with painters Ruth Prowse and Nita Spilhaus. She was asked to exhibit in Cape Town, and was cruelly disillusioned. Her work, like that of Irma Stern, met with fierce criticism, most notably from Bernard Lewis of Die Burger and The Cape Times, who as late as 1931 was able to write of her work in a group show:

"Is there any normal, sane human being in all South Africa who is able to appreciate as a work of art, to enjoy as a picture...the one sent by Maggie Laubser?" Bernard Lewis