Skip to main content
Lot 112*

Breyten Breytenbach
(South African, born 1939)
'Common or Garden Peace'

23 March 2011, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street

£2,000 - £3,000

Own a similar item?

Submit your item online for a free auction estimate.

How to sell

Looking for a similar item?

Our specialists can help you find a similar item at an auction or via a private sale.

Find your local specialist

Breyten Breytenbach (South African, born 1939)

'Common or Garden Peace'
inscribed with title and signed 'Breyten' (verso)
oil on canvas
60 x 81cm (23 5/8 x 31 7/8in).

Footnotes

PROVENANCE:
Sale, Auction Perrin, Royere, La Jeunesse, France, 26 April 1987, lot 38
A private collection

Breyten Breytenbach studied fine arts at the University of Cape Town and became a committed opponent of apartheid. He left South Africa for Paris in the early 1960s and in France he was a founder member of Okhela, a resistance group fighting apartheid in exile.

On an illegal trip to South Africa in 1975 he was betrayed, arrested and sentenced to nine years of imprisonment for high treason. His work The True Confessions of an Albino Terrorist describes aspects of his imprisonment. Released in 1982 as a result of massive international intervention he returned to Paris and obtained French citizenship.

Additional information