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Irma Stern (1894-1966) Piazza San Marco, Venice, 1948
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Details
Signed and dated ‘Irma Stern 1948’ (lower left).
Sizes:
Artwork: 50 × 60 cm | 19.7 × 23.6 in
The façade of St Mark’s rises against a deep blue sky, its domes, mosaics and Gothic pinnacles put down in loaded strokes of cream, pink and turquoise. To the right the corner of the Doge’s Palace fills the foreground with a single great pointed arch in ochre and slate; to the left stand the flagpoles of the Piazza and a glimpse of the Clock Tower, and a handful of figures cross the pavement, each made with two or three touches of the brush. The paint is thin and fast, the weave of the canvas left to show through the square.
Irma Stern could not travel to Europe during the war. In 1948 she went back for the first time, visited the Venice Biennale, and wrote to her friend Freda Feldman that she had painted ‘quite a few pictures’ in the city. These Venetian canvases of 1948, canals, the lagoon and the monuments of San Marco, are a small and distinct group in her work: the palette of her Zanzibar years, turquoise, rose and gold, turned on the architecture of Europe, with the speed of a painter working in front of the motif.
Provenance
Private Collection, United Kingdom.
Private Collection, Germany.
Acquired from the above in 2020.
Condition Report
Oil on canvas, unlined, on its stretcher. The paint is thinly applied, with the canvas weave visible in places as intended; slight undulation of the canvas in the upper left, minor abrasion at the extreme edges and corners, and light surface dirt. The tacking margins are frayed and the reverse of the canvas shows old staining; unframed. Please contact us to request a detailed Condition Report.
Shipping
Packed as size S (up to 60 × 50 cm) · 60 × 50 cm
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- Made-to-measure wooden crate (works over 20,000 €)
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We coordinate packing and shipping on your behalf, with insurance available if you’d like it — or you’re welcome to arrange your own. Please see our Shipping Information page for full details before completing your purchase.
Authenticity & Buyer Information
This lot is catalogued under the artist’s name without qualification. Provenance, dating and condition are described to the best of our knowledge; the sale is governed by our Conditions of Sale.
Buyers should review the catalogue carefully and raise any questions before bidding; additional information is not ordinarily provided after the auction.
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Market context
Oils from Irma Stern's Venice visit of 1948 are rare at auction: a canal view of 59 x 49 cm sold at Strauss & Co in November 2025 for 2,173,125 ZAR including premium, and the larger Grand Canal, Venice made 6,127,000 ZAR there in 2011. The Stern portrait we offered in November 2025 sold for 70,000 € hammer.
| Date | Sale | Work | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18 November 2025 | Strauss & Co, Cape Town | A Small Canal, Venice, 1948, oil on canvas, 59 x 49 cm | 2,173,125 ZAR with premium (estimate 2,000,000–3,000,000) |
| 7 March 2011 | Strauss & Co, Cape Town | Grand Canal, Venice, 1948, oil on canvas, 69 x 88.5 cm | 6,127,000 ZAR with premium (estimate 4,000,000–6,000,000) |
| 8 November 2025 | Aurora & Athena, Barcelona | Portrait of a Woman, 1945, oil on canvas, 78 x 58 cm | 70,000 EUR hammer (estimate 20,000–30,000) |
Prices as published by the selling houses, including their buyer’s premium, in the currency of the sale. Estimate for this lot: €20,000–40,000.
What it costs
Bidding on this site, the buyer’s premium is 25%, Spanish IVA included. There is no VAT on the hammer price and no card fee.
| Starting price | Low estimate | High estimate | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hammer price | €15,000 | €20,000 | €40,000 |
| Buyer’s premium 25% (IVA included) | €3,750 | €5,000 | €10,000 |
| Total on auroraathena.com | €18,750 | €25,000 | €50,000 |
| Total through a bidding platform (30%) | €19,500 | €26,000 | €52,000 |
Through LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable, Drouot or Bidspirit the premium is 30%: the same hammer of €40,000 costs €52,000 there against €50,000 here. Shipping and insurance are quoted separately; the estimator below gives the figure for your country. Buyers outside the EU pay no Spanish tax on the lot; the destination’s import rules apply (United States: original paintings and drawings enter duty-free; United Kingdom: 5% import VAT on art). Card payments are accepted up to €10,000; larger amounts by bank transfer.
Questions about this lot
How does the estimate compare with the artist’s recent auction results?
Oils from Irma Stern's Venice visit of 1948 are rare at auction: a canal view of 59 x 49 cm sold at Strauss & Co in November 2025 for 2,173,125 ZAR including premium, and the larger Grand Canal, Venice made 6,127,000 ZAR there in 2011. The Stern portrait we offered in November 2025 sold for 70,000 € hammer.
The results we compared are listed under “Market context” on this page, each with its source, so you can check them.
What will this lot cost in total?
Bidding on this site, the buyer’s premium is 25%, Spanish IVA included, and there is no VAT on the hammer price and no card fee: at the starting price of €15,000 the total is €18,750; at the low estimate of €20,000 the total is €25,000; at the high estimate of €40,000 the total is €50,000.
Through LiveAuctioneers, Invaluable, Drouot or Bidspirit the premium is 30%, so the same hammer of €40,000 costs €52,000 there. Shipping and insurance are quoted separately; the estimator on this page gives the figure for your country. Buyers outside the EU pay no Spanish tax on the lot; the destination’s import rules apply (United States: original paintings and drawings enter duty-free; United Kingdom: 5% import VAT on art). Card payments are accepted up to €10,000; larger amounts by bank transfer.
How is this lot catalogued?
Under the artist’s name without qualification. Provenance, dating, condition and value are described to the best of our knowledge; the sale is governed by the Conditions of Sale.
Can I see the condition report, more photographs or the work itself?
A condition report with ultraviolet photographs is prepared on request, normally within two working days; the condition summary on this page is examined in-house and is not a conservator’s report. Further photographs of any detail, the reverse or the frame are sent on request. The work can be examined in our Barcelona showroom by appointment before the sale, and you are welcome to send your own conservator or specialist.
How does bidding work, and can a maximum bid make me overpay?
You can leave a maximum bid before the sale (the sale is on Saturday, November 28th - 17:00 (CET)) or bid live in our online room. A maximum bid is executed by the auctioneer only as much as is needed to stay ahead of other bidders, in the sale’s increments, never above your maximum.
Where a reserve exists it never exceeds the low estimate; a lot without a reserve sells to the highest bid at or above the starting price of €15,000.
Is there a limit on how much I can bid?
Every account is approved for bidding as soon as the e-mail address is confirmed, with a limit of €5,000 per bid until the identity is verified. The limit applies everywhere: in the live room, on the lot page and to maximum bids. To bid without a limit, verify your identity in your account on this site: it takes about three minutes on a phone, is done once, and the limit is lifted automatically as soon as the check is complete. Please do it at least an hour before the sale.
Irma Stern
Irma Stern was a modernist painter who helped shape the visual language of 20th century South African art. Born in Schweizer-Reneke to German-Jewish parents, Stern spent her early years between South Africa and Europe, studying under Max Pechstein and soaking up German Expressionism. Her paintings are bold, colourful, sculptural and psychologically deep and often depict African life and landscapes through a lens of empathy and reverence rather than exoticism.
Throughout her career Stern was both admired and controversial – a woman asserting her vision in a man’s world and an artist navigating complex cultural and political realities. Her portraits and still lifes are full of life and express not only external beauty but the inner intensity of the subject. Today Irma Stern is one of Africa’s most important modern artists, her work is celebrated for its authenticity, humanism and timelessness.
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