Still Life with Flowers

Still Life with flowers by the South African artist Christo Coetzee (1929-2000) in 1955. During the selection of artwork for the 2011 Christo Coetzee retrospective exhibition held at the University of Pretoria, this small floral still-life was discovered behind another portrait of Coetzee's wife, Ferrie Binge Coetzee. In Coetzee’s early days, he was well-known for his genre-paintings, and in the 1980’s he revisited this recognisable style. This rediscovered painting in 2011 was a highlight for the exhibition as it had never been seen before. Short biography. The Johannesburg born artist, Christo Coetzee pursued his art studies at the Slade School of Art in London as a complementary tuition exercise to his fine art degree qualification acquired from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg South Africa. Most of Coetzee's works are mainly colourful, stylized figurative images and still-life. After completing his studies he moved to Europe on a Government Travelling Scholarship and become part of the Stadler Stable in Paris before moving to Finestrat in Spain. Later, Coetzee went to Japan where he was invited to join the Gutai Group, the first radical Art Group in post-war Japan. It was in Japan that Coetzee developed his later art style that ultimately classified him as South Africa's leading and prominent avant-garde artists. Coetzee received international recognition for his contribution to the avant-garde art movements known as Art Informel, Assemblage and Neo-Baroque in Paris, Spain and Japan during the 1950s and 1960s, an art style he perfected. He passed away at the age of 71 in 2000 in Tulbagh in the Cape and bequeathed his entire home and collection to the University of Pretoria.