Magazines - Tribal Art Winter 2010

By Catherine Elliott Weinberg who holds an MA from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and is a London-based arts freelancer.

Introduction
L’Afrique: A Tribute to Maria Stein-Lessing and Leopold Spiegel is both the title of an exhibition at Museum Africa in Johannesburg, South Africa, and a book published to mark the event.  For the occasion, elements of the now dispersed Spiegel/Stein-Lessing Collection of African art have been brought together again. The exhibition celebrates the lives of Maria Stein-Lessing (1905–1961) and Leopold Spiegel (1911–2006), their pioneering collection, and the impact both they and their objects had and continue to have on a generation of South African artists and thinkers. 
The predominantly southern African material in the installation is drawn from Museum Africa, the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) Art Galleries, the Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG), and the private collection of Natalie Knight (NK). Also on view are paintings and sculptures by South African artists from the couple’s own collection as well as from the Maria Stein-Lessing Memorial Art Collection, set up posthumously at Wits University.