Fond memories of yesteryear for sale

ONE man's collection provides a poignant backdrop to Strauss & Co's Important South African and International Art auction at the Wanderers Club in Johannesburg tomorrow.

ONE man's collection provides a poignant backdrop to Strauss & Co's Important South African and International Art auction at the Wanderers Club in Johannesburg tomorrow.

Pharmacist Harry Lits, 84, who still works every day but is about to move from his house in Johannesburg to downsize due to ill health, is parting with 30 pieces he bought over the years, mainly under the direction of his next-door neighbour, friend and former gallery owner Egon Guenther.

Lits collected mainly works from the Amadlozi Group, influential South African artists that included Cecil Skotnes, Ezrom Legae, Sydney Kumalo and Edoardo Villa.

Lits agreed to an interview surrounded by the works he had lived with for decades, and which were now up for pre-auction viewing.

"I come from Potchefstroom and my family was what you'd call disadvantaged today," he said. "In my matric year we went to our school hall and I looked at these things on the wall called art.

"I thought if I ever had money I'd get into the art field.

"But I forgot about it. I went to university, where I studied pharmacy. I bought a business, I got married and had children.

"One day, when we went to buy plants for the garden of our new home, I saw there was an art gallery next door and told my wife we should go in to take a look."

With his old dream reignited, but no idea where to start, he got an important piece of advice from a school teacher who had been working for him.

"She told me to go to the Egon Guenther Gallery. She said he had a guy called Skotnes exhibiting. So I called up Egon and went around that evening, and I entered this foreign climate. This brings back memories."

Fighting back tears, Lits recalled buying his first piece of art, hanging behind him at the auction venue as he spoke.

"Skotnes was the artist I had the most contact with, through Egon. At the end of the evening I'd become a buyer. That's how I started."

When his friends went on holidays he bought art instead.

"I just got more enjoyment from it. I wasn't particularly interested in holidays, and my friends weren't interested in my art."

He said every piece held a special meaning for him, and they all occupied spaces in the family home since he began buying art in the late 1950s.

Guenther remained Lits's "guiding light" when it came to choice of what to buy. "He believed in Africanism. He was adamant about that. He said the group [Amadlozi] would do better than the individual. Indirectly or directly he influenced me."

Lits said that he now had no option but to part with most of his collection, but he remained emotionally involved.

"What I'm doing now I consider wrong. It goes against everything I believe in. I still can't believe I'm selling these pieces," he said.

"But because of my ill health I have to have a reserve."

Casting an eye over a group of schoolchildren from the nearby Jan Celliers primary school, who had come to view the paintings before the sale, Lits was again unable to hold back tears.

"I'm just watching these kids. I must have been 16 or 17 when I first became aware of art. Now, as an old man I look at them seeing the same thing.

"This is how it begins. It's a feeling you can't explain. It's not about the money. I just wanted to live with the art."

Alongside Lits's collection will be 15 works by Jacob Hendrik Pierneef, one of which - An Extensive View of Farmlands, painted in 1926 - is expected to sell at R10-million to R12-million.

"People don't realise how prolific he was," said Stephan Welz, MD of Strauss & Co. Pierneef's Landscape with River (1938) is expected to sell for up to R1.6-million.

The sale includes works by Picasso, Gregoire Boonzaier, Wim Botha, William Kentridge and Norman Catherine.

The day sale begins at 4pm at the Wanderers Club Ballroom, with the Harry Lits collection included in the night session at 8pm. Pre-auction viewing runs from 10am to 5pm today.