After Eden at Longstreet Art Lovers 1932 | Art.co.za Art Exhibition Listings

The work of Michael Sarjeant (19 May 1933 - 11 Oct 2014), shown for the first time, posthumously, in 2019. Wistful and moving work, and full of longing. The recurring female form filling his vision and the canvas. His hesitant and prodigious odalisques, attempting to fill the rent in his world. Voluptuous and alluring, yet distant and pensive, sometimes with long and enormous cloud-like legs, sometimes undulating like water. Thin little arms unable to hold on. The persistent presence of a diminutive male figure in a suit, trying to reach the unreachable. Wishful and nostalgic couples floating in interiors with flowers and cats and furniture and windows. Fruitless angel wings and furious lines. Human figures often portrayed as giants lost in a doll's house world too small for them, and yet too large. Tiny figures and furniture and buildings floating out of the frame, adrift and mowed down by the giant, merciless lawnmower in the sky.

Sarjeant experimented with a variety of approaches, the brushstrokes often richly applied, but occasionally delicate and clean, many works strongly reminiscent of Chagall and the interiors of Van Gogh. On occasion suggesting a secret surrealist, perhaps an early Miró, the manipulated scale of Yves Tanguy.

The exhibition is but a fraction of Sarjeant's prolific artistic output, due simply to the limits of the gallery's wall space. Two hundred and twenty-four paintings left behind and fifty-eight drawings, the only remaining record of his thoughts and yearnings, his solitary and reclusive epilogue, his loneliness complete after the passing of his wife.