Michael Coulson chats with Stefan Welz about Strauss & Co, South African art auctions, as well as setting up shop in Cape Town and Johannesburg

Veteran art auctioneer and farmer Stefan Welz is as happy as a boy with a new train set. The first sale catalogue for his new firm, Strauss & Co, is going to bed with 165 lots and a gross estimated between R30m-R40m. The average low estimate of about R190 000 is the highest he’s ever known for an auction of SA art.

Values range the full spectrum, from R4 000-R6 000 to R4m-R6m, the latter for an Irma Stern landscape, White House in Madeira.

There’s also what Welz claims is internationally still the best-known, and most reproduced, SA painting. Frans Oerder’s still life
Magnolias was bought by the New York Graphic Society (which bought the artist’s Blossomtime at the same time) and published in 1939 as a print which for many years was the biggest selling reproduction of any still life painting in the world.
It came back home, bought by an SA collector, in 1956 and is now on offer with an estimate of R600 000-R900 000.

The gross may not be a record, but Welz no longer sees size as a virtue. “The old company just got too big, and we had to drive sales regardless of quality just to pay the bills – the appetite was insatiable! Also, I got bogged down in finances and day-to-day management. Now I’m back to doing what I enjoy most: looking at pictures, finding them, and persuading people to buy them. It’s important for me to believe in what I’m selling.”

While he denies that he wasn’t proud of everything he sold at Stephan Welz/Sotheby’s (now increasingly known for brevity and clarity, if not elegance, as Swelco), the subtext is that some work came dangerously close to the margin. He stresses that price and quality are not synonymous – though Tretchikoff does feature in Strauss’s first sale!
Busy as they have been assembling their first Jo’burg fine art sale, Welz and his new colleagues have not been letting the grass grow under their feet in other areas. Welz confirms, with properly if barely disguised glee, market rumours that Strauss has poached three top people from the Cape branch of his old firm.

As we spoke, Strauss chairman Conrad Strauss was actually in Cape Town looking for new premises, probably in the Claremont/Newlands area. “I know the trendy galleries are moving to Woodstock,” says Welz, “but it’s not ideal for us. We have a different, somewhat older, clientele – on both the buying and selling side. They come from the southern suburbs and, rightly or wrongly, they’re not so keen to go into what they see as less salubrious areas.”
Strauss plans to differentiate the venues. “We’ll keep major art sales in Johannesburg. We will include art in Cape Town in the two sales we plan each year, but it may be lesser, more decorative items. On the other hand, we’ll concentrate on things like furniture, silverware and ceramics in Cape Town, where they have a more developed market.

“After all, the Cape is where most old Cape furniture comes from; it’s the natural place to sell it.”

Strauss will also preview highlights of its first sale in Cape Town, on February 17/18, in the Dolphin Room at the Castle.

Is Welz worried about re-entering the art market at a time when it’s coming under huge strain internationally? Major auction houses like Sotheby’s itself, Christie’s and Bonham’s are frantically laying off staff and slashing costs.

“Lesser work, of what one may call decorative value, is what I believe will suffer most. Its buyers tended to be indiscriminate and occasional.

“Also, people who bought in the mid to late 1980s, when the market was depressed, are becoming sellers as they reach an age where they’re scaling down and moving into smaller properties.

“But the backbone of the market is the true collector, who’s not after a quick buck, knows what he wants, and is prepared to wait for it. That market may be affected, but I think it will remain, and it’s what we must focus on.

“The market may hold up better in SA, but it can’t escape the trend. In particular, second-rate works from major artists may be hit.”

What concerns Welz more is that the market is not broadening. “The favoured names all appear in the first edition of Esme Berman’s book [Art & Artists of SA, published in 1970]. That’s a limited supply: where are the new names we need desperately?

“And remember that the market for SA art is still an SA market. The Russian oligarchs aren’t buying it! And it’s unattractive for an SA resident to buy abroad and repatriate art: the extra costs can add 40% to the hammer price.”

Sage words potential buyers will do well to bear in mind.

Oh, by the way: Welz has decided to resist a land claim on his farm (“It’s completely frivolous”) and Farmers Weekly chose one of his animals as Cow of the Year. So there’s no let-up in that side of his life, either.