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. 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, such as Georges Mathieu, Alfred Wols, Jean Dubuffet, Jean Fautrier, Hans Hartung, Pierre Soulages, Antoni Tàpies and Lucio Fontana.

Early life and education 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 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.

Career and travels

London, 1951–1955 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. After her return to South Africa, he spent another six months in London, before returning to Johannesburg at the beginning of 1953. Other buyers were Sandy and Bunny Roger, who purchased two works (sold by Sotheby's in 1998), and Elizabeth David.

In 1958, Coetzee's Crespian (1957), an assemblage painting, is included in the Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, along with artists such as Joan Mitchell, Conrad Marca-Relli, Édgar Negret, Maurice Wyckaert, Nassos Daphnis, Ellsworth Kelly, Alexander Calder and Richard Diebenkorn.

Coetzee became an attendee at the Thursday salon of Marie-Louise Bousquet, wife of dramatist Jacques Bousquet and Harper's Bazaar's editor in Paris for 50 years. Here Coetzee met Dutch painter Karel Appel, Annabel Buffett, wife and muse of Bernard Buffet and gallerist Charles Vessey.

Coetzee found an important friend in the person of Aileen Hennessy, the cognac heiress, who had an apartment at 1 rue Gît-le-Cœur in the 6th arrondissement, only 7 minutes walk from his studio. Aileen was a painter who accompanied Coetzee to galleries and invited him to the gatherings she hosted in her apartment on the Seine. Typical attendees would have been Aileen's sister Scheilagh and Alice DeLamar, heiress to the fortune of Joseph Raphael De Lamar, who had an apartment in the same building. In later years Aileen's brother, Francis Hennessy, would visit Coetzee in Tulbagh, South Africa. to the University of Johannesburg. and from 28 September to 22 October 1960 respectively. Version I, of which Coetzee was a part, also featured Antoni Tàpies, Jean Arp, Alberto Burri, Alexander Calder, John Chamberlain, Joseph Cornell, Jim Dine, Jean Dubuffet, Dan Flavin, Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Yves Klein, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg.

Paris, 1961–1965

Christo Coetzee's first solo show at Galerie Stadler opened at the end of January 1961 and, in April 1961, solo shows are held at the Lawrence Adler Gallery, Johannesburg and the Galerie d'Arte del Naviglio, Milan. Around this time Anthony Denney and partner Alex Collins won a commission from shipping magnate Basil Mavroleon to design the interior of his yacht Radiant II.

In the same year, while on his way to a reception by Rosamond Bernier, art historian an co-founding editor of the magazine L'Oeil, he became stuck in an elevator with designer Elsa Schiaparelli. They struck up a conversation became friends and Schiaparelli commissioned a painting to promote her perfume S. The painting was later given pride of place, above the stairs, at her home at 22 Rue de Berri in the eight arrondissement of Paris.

Also in 1962, Coetzee received a studio visit by Danie van Niekerk of the Rembrandt Group to commission a work for Turmac Tobacco Company in Zevenaar, Netherlands. This collection had been started in 1960 by Alexander Orlow and employed respected advisors to guide acquisitions. At the time of the Coetzee acquisition Stedelijk Museum director Willem Sandberg was the acquisitions advisor. The collection would be named the Peter Stuyvesant Collection, and, in 1994 renamed the BAT Artventure Collection.

A second solo exhibition of Neo-Baroque works was held from 22 October to 18 November 1963 at Galerie Stadler. The introduction to the exhibition was again provided by Michel Tapié de Céleyran and photographs show Anthony Denney, Duchesse d'Ayen and Aileen Hennessy in attendance. was restored, along with the barn he used as a studio, and opened as the Christo Coetzee House Museum and Gallery in August 2011. Coetzee's collection of some 2600 objects d′art were donated to the University of Pretoria Art Collection, which are in the possession of 193 artworks by the artist.

Career exhibitions Standard Bank, The Safest Place is the Knife's Edge, 2018 University of Pretoria, Retrospective, 2010 Sasol Kunsmuseum, Stellenbosch, Christo Coetzee 70, 17 April 1999 – 27 June 1999 Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan, Exhibition of Post-modern paintings by Christo Coetzee, 5 October 1985 – 20 October 1985 Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, Retrospective Exhibition (1965-1983), 1983 Potchefstroom University for CHE, Potchefstroom, Commemorative Exhibition, 1983 South African Association of Arts (Northern Transvaal), Pretoria, 1978 South African Association of Arts (Western Cape), Cape Town, January 1975 Galerie Connoisseur, Northcliff, Johannesburg, 1 February 1973 – 15 February 1973 Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, April 1971 Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, February 1969 Pretoria Art Museum, Christo Coetzee, 1 December 1965 to 2 January 1966 Galerie Stadler, Paris, Peintures de Coetzee, 22 October 1963 – 18 November 1963 Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Art of Assemblage, 1961 Galerie Stadler, Paris, Coetzee, 24 January to 20 February 1961 Takashimaya Gallery, Osaka, Coetzee: Exhibition presented by the Gutai Art Association, January 1960 Minami Gallery, Tokyo, October 1959 Galerie Stadler, Paris, Christo Coetzee, 17 March 1959 Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting and Sculpture, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 5 December 1958 to 8 February 1959 Hanover Gallery, London, Christo Coetzee, 17 March to 15 April 1955 ID Booksellers, Cape Town, Christo Coetzee, January 1951

Major collections

Christo Coetzee's works are included in a number of collections:

International Beaverbrook Art Gallery, New Brunswick, Canada Collection of Anthony Denney, Musee d'Art Moderne, Toulouse, France International Centre for Aesthetic Research, Turin, Italy Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan Idemitsu Collection, Tokyo, Japan Peter Stuyvesant Collection, Amsterdam Turmac Collection, Zeevenaar, Netherlands Schlesinger Art Collection, Italy

South African Museums South African National Gallery, Cape Town Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria William Humphreys Art Gallery, Kimberley Hester Rupert Art Museum, Graaff Reinet Potchefstroom Museum, Potchefstroom Roodepoort Museum, Roodepoort Oliewenhuis Art Museum, Bloemfontein

South African University Collections North-West University, Potchefstroom Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch University of Pretoria, Pretoria University of South Africa, Pretoria University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg University of Cape Town, Cape Town

Corporate and Other Collections State Theatre, Pretoria OR Tambo International Airport, Johannesburg CSIR, Pretoria Volkskas Art Collection, Pretoria, now the ABSA Art Collection Sasol Corporate Art Collection, Johannesburg Sanlam Art Collection, Cape Town Rembrandt van Rijn Art Foundation Polokwane Art Gallery, Polokwane Sandton Municipality Collection, Johannesburg Schlesinger Art Collection, Johannesburg