| Irma Stern - The Woman
Irma Stern was born in 1894 to German Jewish parents at Schweizer-Reneke,
a small town in the North West Province of South Africa.
Her father, Samuel, and a brother, Leopald, had emigrated earlier
in 1891 and established a thriving trading store and cattle farm.
However, both brothers were interned during the Anglo Boer War (1899-1902)
because of their pro Boer sympathies so Irma together with her young
brother, Rudi, were taken by their mother, Henny (nee Fels) to Cape
Town.
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After the war the children went to
Germany with their parents and thus began a pattern of regular travel,
which was to characterize and influence Irma's development as an
artist and individual and continue throughout her adult life.
Although the family returned to South Africa for intermittent periods while Irma was
growing up, they spent the years of the First World War (1914-1918) in Germany. Irma
decided to become a painter and was supported in her decision by her parents.
She studied in Berlin and Weimer and met the Expressionist, Max Pechstein in 1916 who
encouraged and influenced her work and helped arranged her first exhibition in Berlin
before she returned to South Africa with her family in 1920. Initially derided and
dismissed as an artist in Cape Town where her work was not understood by the conservative
citizens, Irma Stern remained passionate to her vocation and was regarded as an established
artist by the 1940s.
In 1926 she married Dr Johannes Prinz her former tutor, who subsequently became
professor of German at the University of Cape Town. They were divorced in 1934.
A house named "The Firs" in Rosebank, Cape Town was bought for her by her parents in 1927 and
remained her home until her death in 1966.
This house became the Irma Stern Museum in 1971. It was established by Trustees of her estate and
is administered by the University of Cape Town. Three of the rooms are furnished as she arranged them;
the sitting room, dining room and studio all demonstrate her unique style and eclectic taste as a collector.
Upstairs there is a commercial gallery available for hire by contemporary South African artists. A temporary
exhibition programme is arranged annually and visitors can enjoy the garden.
The museum, situated in Cecil Road, Rosebank, Cape Town, is open from Tuesday - Saturday: 10h00-17h00. A modest
entrance fee is charged. Phone 685 5686 for further details.
Her travels as an adult
Irma Stern travelled extensively in Europe and explored Southern Africa, Zanzibar and the Congo. These trips provided a wide range of subject matter for her paintings and gave her oppurtunities to acquire and assemble an eclectic collection of artifacts for her home.
She journeyed to Swaziland and Natal in particular during the 1920's, producing two of her seminal works titled Umgababa and The Hunt, both of which can be viewed at the Museum.
In 1931 she visited Madeira and Dakar, Senegal, in 1937 and 1938.
A letter from the artist to friends in Johannesburg named Richard and Frieda Feldman, dated 26 June 1937, written from Brussels, describes some of these travel plans.
"... after Holland - a week in Paris for sights and hats and pictures... - then Salsburg Festspiele for a week - then Vienna. After that Italy - and I start working - there and in Marseille and on my back I am staying a month in Dakkar... We hope there will be no war - things are so unsettled just now."
Irma Stern refused to either travel or exhibit in Germany during the period 1933 - 1945. Instead, she undertook several exotic journeys into Africa; going to Zanzibar twice in 1939 and 1945 and then planned three trips to the congo in 1942, 1946 and 1955. These expeditions resulted in a wealth of artistic creativity and energy as well as the publication of two illustrated journals; Congo published in 1943 and Zanzibar in 1948.
Two short quotes from the respective journals about her travels in Africa show how the artist
enthusiastically responded to the new exotic environments.
"I am on the road to the interior of the Belgian Congo. The Congo has always been for me the
symbol of Africa, the very heart of Africa. The sound "Congo" makes my blood dance, with the
thrill of excitement; it sounds to me like distant native drums and a heavy tropical river
flowing, its water gurgling in mystic depths."
In Zanzibar Irma Stern describes Indian women in purdah and Arab men wearing turbans and white
robes. The food market was a daily delight where "..fish are brought in straight from the sea,
huge skites, small vivid blue fish with yellow stripes, silvery kinds, red roman, enormous
lobsters as made of turquoise matrix, phantastic huge turtles-all came out of the tropical sea.
The stall had a daily surprise of strange kinds of fruit and vegetables. A pale yellow
grapefruit called ballunga intrigued me. When I opened it the flesh was a lovely pink embedded
in a heavy woollen white... There is a variety of bananas, small yellow, large green, as long as
a man's forearm, fat red bananas which are rich in flavour, thin twisted green bananas, long
yellow looking bananas, gourds and pumpkins..."
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