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RHODESIA SMITH AND WILSON 1966
380 X 276 MM
Victor Ivanoff was born in Vilna, Russia, as the son of a Russian Cossack General on 11 January 1909. When the anti communist troops were driven out of Russia in 1920, the family fled to Yugoslavia where Victor registered to study architecture at the University of Zagreb. However, he did not like it and he then joined the Don Cossack choir on their tour around the world.
The group toured South Africa in 1936. The endless South African plains and the freedom of the open veldt reminded Ivanoff of the Russian steppes and he decided to stay in the country. As a self taught cartoon artist, he started at the then Afrikaans newspaper, Die Vaderland where he ultimately worked for 37 years. One of his first commissions was to do a series of caricatures of parliament members. His anti Smuts cartoons were so influential that the United Party blamed Ivanoff for their loss in 1948. Ivanoff was the soul of the Russian community in South Africa – he knew about 200 Russian folk songs. He had a sharp sense of humour and believed that Afrikaners and Russians had a lot in common – both held their freedom in high regard and loved animals and wide open spaces.
Although he drew more than 12 000 cartoons during his is career, his ambition was to be remembered as a serious artist and he even took lessons from JH Pierneef. He was a ‘social realist’ with emphasis on realism, which he viewed as the highest form of art. He worked in oils and in sepia tint and produced mainly landscapes, people and animals (especially horses). He took part in several group exhibitions and also had ten solo exhibitions in the previous Transvaal. Victor Ivanoff died at the age of 87 on 1 February 1997.
