The South African National Association for the Visual Arts (SANAVA)
A Cultural Bridge to Hyderabad, India
Land: Diversity and Unity: an exhibition of selected works by South African artists in the Chowmohalla Palace, Hyderabad
23 July to 7 August 2010
The year 2010 is a significant year for the South African Indian community, as it marks the 150th year since the first Indians arrived on South African shores.
The Director of the Centre for Exposition of World Arts and Culture (CEWAC) in Hyderabad, India, Mr G Kishan Rao, has taken the initiative to reach out to the South African Association for the Visual Arts (SANAVA), suggesting a bilateral exchange in the field of visual arts to commemorate this event. CEWAC is situated in the Chowmohalla Palace, Hyderabad, which served as the seat of the Asaf Jahi dynasty. The palace is the private property of the Nizam of Hyderabad and offers a splendid venue and setting for this cultural exchange between CEWAC and SANAVA.
In response to CEWAC’s invitation, SANAVA and its branch, the Association of Arts Pretoria, organized an exhibition of selected works on paper as well as digital art works by member artists and guest artists of SANAVA branches to be held at the Chowmohalla Palace from 23 July to 7 August 2010. In return, from 1 to 16 September 2010, the selected works of Hyderabad artists will be exhibited in the Mackie Street art gallery of the Association of Arts Pretoria.
Later, during the first half of 2011, the Association of Arts Pretoria will host a selling exhibition of the works exhibited in Hyderabad as well as all the other works that had been submitted for selection.
The theme of the South African works to be exhibited in Hyderabad is: Land: Diversity and Unity. These works, being a series of personal interpretations by a selection of practising South African artists, will demonstrate the diversity of South Africa’s terrain, including geographical, industrial and urban sites and the identities of the people who inhabit them. At the same time, since they all embrace the same land and are inspired by a shared sense of place, they will engage with a notion of unity.
Further, the works will also reflect a critical consideration of traditions in landscape art. The subject of South African landscape art is surrounded by a steadily expanding atmosphere of both receptivity and polemics. In the past, landscape art was almost exclusively narrative and romantic in approach. Land was portrayed as empty, quiet and untainted. Many contemporary artists depart from this ideology and tend towards more contextual and abstract imagery. They would re-map our mindscape by including objects that are reminiscent of the environment and cultures particular to specific regions. In this exhibition a spectrum of traditional and contemporary sensibilities find a place to present a broad understanding, including the moving image and sequential narrative of time. The visual exploration of land becomes a vehicle for a deliberate play with psychological, political, ecological and archival realities.
Election of Management Committee
The term of office of the elected members of the Association’s Management Committee runs to its end during 2010. An election is due with regard to the positions held by the National President and three Vice-Presidents. The result of the election shall be announced at the AGM on 28 August 2010.
The Management Committee presently consists of the National President (Anton Loubser) and three National Vice-Presidents (Gilberto Leal, Lynette ten Krooden and Helen Weldrick).
The following nominations were received:
National President:
Dirkie Offringa
Georina Westraadt
National Vice Presidents:
Yvonne Burns
Hester de Vos
Anton Loubser
Avitha SoofulNew Office for SANAVA
We are presently in the process of moving certain effects from SANAVA’s old office in Bothongo Heights, Andries Street, Pretoria to the Anton van Wouw House Museum, 299 Clark Street, Brooklyn, Pretoria, where a section of the building has been allocated at a nominal monthly rental to the Association to serve as its new head office. This is based on a three year lease agreement between the University of Pretoria (an affiliated academic institution) and SANAVA. The Museum, situated on the corner of Rupert and Clark Street, Brooklyn, was donated some years ago to the University of Pretoria by the Rembrandt Art Foundation, also affiliated to SANAVA.
The office in Bothongo Heights, which remains available on a rent-free basis, will be retained to serve as space for archive material and as a secure area to accommodate the Association’s art collection (works donated by artists who enjoyed a working sojourn in the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, France).
Please note that the tel/fax service number 012 323 1275 in Bothongo Heights has been terminated and that a new number has not, as yet, been allocated to the office in the Anton van Wouw. Provisionally, the contact details of the Association remain as follows:
P O Box 2691
Brooklyn Square
0075Tel: +27 12 460 5826
email: antonlo@telkomsa.netAnnual General Meeting: 2010
SANAVA’s Annual General Meeting 2010 will be hosted by the Association of Arts Pretoria. The AGM is scheduled to be held at the Anton van Wouw Museum, Brooklyn, Pretoria on Saturday, 28 August 2010 at 14h00. It will be followed by a National Council Meeting.
Important also: the works must be ‘happy’. No sad subjects, sombre colours or identifiable items.
SANAVA AWARDS
Top Left: Terry Flynn and Leon du Preez
Top Right: Elizabeth Mills
Bottom Left: Alison James and Terry Flynn
Bottom Right: Terry Flynn
From left to right: Eunice Basson, Anton Loubser, Dirk Oegema and Lynette ten Krooden
For associations and organisations to function well and efficiently, it is absolutely imperative to have good management and administration with dedicated and well-trained staff members who have a clear understanding of, and commitment to, the vision and ideals of their association. Above all, these associations and organisations rely for their ultimate success on the support of their members and patrons, since it depends on them to give life and invigorate them. Voluntary membership of an association is a status which has to be applauded and supported.
The following benefactors and members of branches and organisations affiliated to the National Association, who have over many years consistently shown their loyalty in serving and promoting the visual arts, were recognised by being presented with a token of appreciation:
Eunice Basson (Pretoria)
Glenda Gendall (East London)
Bettie Cilliers-Barnard (Pretoria)
Charles Coppin (East London)
Diane de Beer (Pretoria)
Esmé den Dulk (Pretoria)
Alexander Duffey (Pretoria)
Leon du Preez (East London)
Terry Flynn (East London)
Barry Gibb (East London)
Beth Harris (Pretoria)
Nandi Hilliard (Pretoria)
Elbie Kachelhoffer (Pretoria)
Arie Kuijers (Freestate)
Gilberto Leal (Pretoria)
Teresa Lizamore (Pretoria)
Elizabeth Mills (East London)
Piet Muller (Pretoria)
Johan Myburg (Pretoria)
Dirk Oegema (Pretoria)
Leslie Reinhardt (Pretoria)
Beverley Samler (East London)
Karin Skawran (Pretoria)
Sylvia Skinner (East London)
Lynette ten Krooden (Pretoria)
Gunther van der Reis (Pretoria)
Pieter van Heerden (Pretoria)
Anne Visagie (Klerksdorp)
Marinus Wiechers (Pretoria)
Minette Zaaiman (Pretoria)
Opening of the ‘Pelmama’ exhibition at the Pretoria Art Museum
11 November 2009Honoured Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am honoured to have been asked to open this exhibition of the ‘Pelmama’ Permanent Art Collection. In doing so, we have to pay tribute to the generosity of a great lover of art, a foreign national, Fernand Haenggi, who left an important inheritance as a token of love for a country where he had spent a good deal of his life.
Since the opening of the Pretoria Art Museum in 1964, there has been a close relationship with the Haenggi family. It started with a donation of a drawing by Frans Oerder to the Pretoria Art Museum by Madame Fernande Marie-Louise Haenggi.
Mr Fernand Haenggi was the co-owner and co-director of Gallery 101, Johannesburg, established jointly with his mother, Madame Haenggi, and operating from 1961. The Gallery 101 Group had at its peak 3 branches in Johannesburg. He left the 101 Group in 1972 to start his own gallery, taking over the Hyde Park Corner Branch in Johannesburg, operating henceforth as Gallery 21 Johannesburg, concentrating on top modern South African and international art.
The character of Gallery 21 was somewhat different from the catch-all character of Madame Haenggi’s gallery. Fernand leaned towards contemporary styles in both local and international art. He tended to concentrate on a small group of artists, whom he nurtured and promoted. He devoted energy and effort to fostering his exhibitors, show-casing their work at major exhibitions in South Africa and abroad, publishing books about their work and issuing folios of their graphic prints.
Fernand Haenggi was dynamically involved in the South African art market from 1961 until 1993, and also the driving force behind Pelmama, when he decided to retire and settle in Switzerland, his home country. In 1979, Mr Haenggi organised a Lucas Sithole retrospective exhibition at the Rand Afrikaans University, Johannesburg, which was then shown at the Pretoria Art Museum.
As from 1991, the Haenggi Foundation Inc donated and loaned a number of important art works to the Pretoria Art Museum, in recognition of many years of congenial cooperation. This included works by many exciting South African artists, covering the period of the 1960s to the 1980s. It consisted of mostly graphic artworks and a collection of ceramics. The donation of ceramics represents a considerable addition to the small collection already brought together by the Art Museum, and almost doubled the ceramic collection at that stage. The Haenggi Foundation received a variety of art objects from the collection of Gertrude Agranat. Some of the ceramics that came to the Museum stems from that request. From 1991 onwards, the Museum received various artworks on loan from the Haenggi Foundation.
All works of art donated over the years to the Haenggi Foundation by artists or private collectors have been passed on freely to public museums in South Africa, as part of the Pelmama Permanent Art Collection. In 1995, the donation was extended to include works and items from the studio of Lucas Sithole. All the artworks donated and on loan became an integral part of the Pretoria Art Museum’s exhibitions.
On the occasion of Mr Haenggi’s 75th birthday in January 2009, all works until then loaned to the Pretoria Art Museum through the Haenggi Art Foundation are to be considered freely donated to the Pretoria Art Museum. This gift is all the more meaningful and significant in the light of the financial constraints under which art museums have to deliver, and the lack of funding for acquisitions.
With this exhibition the Pretoria Art Museum, an affiliated member of the South African National Association for the Visual Arts (SANAVA), would like to acknowledge the generosity of Mr Fernand Haenggi for his tremendous donation. The works which we and generations to come may admire in the Museum, thanks to the generosity of Fernand Haenggi, reflect the aesthetic views and personal values of a great lover of the arts. We pay tribute to Fernand Haenggi and thank him for this extraordinary gift to the Pretoria Art Museum.
Honoured Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, enjoy the exhibition. I declare it open.
Anton Loubser
National President
SANAVA
Annual General Meeting
The Annual General Meeting 2009 of SANAVA was hosted by the East London Fine Art Society on Friday evening, 24 April 2009 at the Ann Bryant Art Gallery, 9 St Marks Road, Southernwood, East London.
A meeting of the National Council followed on Saturday morning, 25 April 2009.
Dear Terry and Leon
Having attended the AGM and NCM on 24 and 25 April 2009 in East London, and before more time goes by, I wish to thank you both on behalf of SANAVA for your personal efforts in ensuring the success of the events. You were so well supported by the Committee of ELFAS, and you, Leon, by your wife Lauren. Please convey our sincere appreciation and deepest thanks to all those dear people who contributed their time and efforts in offering generous hospitality and in giving joy to those who attended. The inputs of your members and the Gallery personnel served as a guarantee that no one would leave East London, ELFAS and the Ann Bryant disappointed for having come a long way.
It remains a singular pleasure always to deal with ELFAS and the Ann Bryant! And when I think of the visit to East London, I always recall Lauren’s chocolate cake!
Many thanks and kindest regards to all.
Anton Loubser
National President
SANAVA
Centurion Art Association
Branch Exhibition
The Centurion Art Association held its annual Members' Exhibition from 31 March 2009 to 30 April 2009 at the Centurion Art Gallery, c/o Cantonments Road and Unie Avenue, Lyttelton, Centurion.
While there was no particular theme for this year's exhibition, there was a size limit of 500x500mm and artists were encouraged to use this as a challenge in their various media.
The eldest member of the association "Oom" JP Louw (92), still exhibited as usual and some school learners, who are welcomed into the association, exhibited as well. The exhibition is but one of various activities presented annually by Centurion Art Association.
Further details can be obtained from the Chairman, Deon van Loggerenberg, on 082 443 1958
