Zanzibar Street Scene

Oil on Canvas
61.5 x 62cm (excl. frame)
73.5 x 71.8 x 6.5cm (incl. frame)
Signed: “Irma Stern” (Lower/Right)
Dated: 1945

Illustrated & Referenced:     Graham’s Fine Art Gallery. 2004. Important South African Paintings by Artists from 1867 onwards. Graham’s Fine Art Gallery, Johannesburg.

“The bazaar can be like a grey dead shell, some huge prehistoric sea shell, grey and bleak, with a smell of decay coming out of the very stones”.

Stern found the atmosphere of the Zanzibar bazaar suffocating. In her book “Zanzibar” she vividly describes the suffering of the inhabitants and the fetid atmosphere and commented on the narrow claustrophobic streets with walls built high to protect from the blazing sun. “Those were the days when I wanted to leave in a panic, just get away, felt myself locked up, jailed in this island of coral reef”.

In “Zanzibar Street Scene” she escapes the muddied streets portraying the view from a roof-top or upper window.  The colours echo the opening of the chapter “The Bazaar”: the pinky grey, the dead grey of the shell that she describes. However, the warmth of the sunlight in the golden browns reflected on the walls in the foreground raise the scene from the decay of the narrow streets. The warm colours enclose the scene and emphasise the close proximity of the buildings. The detail of the figures in the windows and doorway, and the shrubs on the balcony create a sympathy that is lacking in her description, signs of colour and life that contrast with the grey stones. The red of the roofs also raises the eye up from the claustrophobic atmosphere of the streets.

Stern returned to South Africa with many souvenirs of her trip to Zanzibar. The door that graces the entrance of the Firs (Stern’s Cape Town Home) is one such acquisition. Stern involved herself with the complete process of picture making, stretching her own canvases and making her own frames with wood from Zanzibar doors. The frame she created for the “Zanzibar Street Scene” is more than a mere frame, an authentic window from which the artist viewed the Bazaar.