Alice Elahi in her prime
This article from Lantern - Journal for Knowledge and Culture Volume XXVI No 3 March - May 1977 is written by JOHAN VAN ROOYEN. It offers an insight into Alice's background and early career.
Undoubtedly Alice Elahi is in her prime: she paints with a conviction born of knowledge and with an eye that may be trusted. ‘Coming into one’s own’ may imply due recognition. For the artist, however, the reward, often after years of labour, is the arrival at an own and unmistakable identity, a wholly responsible point of view. This is the criterion which differentiates between mannerism and true style, between gimmick and authentic expression.
Talent, indispensible as it is, serves only as springboard. As the athlete’s performance depends on the perfect balance of his whole being, so, too, the artist’s exercise of his skills must become a fusion of his senses and mind. When this happens we discern the voice of authority. This is his liberation.
With the sizable exhibition of paintings in Pretoria in October last year, Alice Elahi came into her own. Representing the work of two years, the collection emphasized a considerable progress in her art. It may be said that she not only fulfilled her earlier promise as prize-winner for painting in the 1968 New Signatures competition, but convincingly demonstrated a much greater range than formerly anticipated for her. (Compare the delicate lyricism of Rietvlei with the passion of the tempest in Storm in the Harbour.)
The daughter of Mr and Mrs RS Brooke, Alice grew up in Rondebosch, Cape. Obsessed with art and an urge for self-expression since childhood, she received some lessons at the age of 14 from Florence Zerffi at the Rustenburg Girls’ High School, and, for a period, attended classes at the Frank Joubert Art Centre. Upon matriculation, however, she took a BSc degree in natural sciences at the University of Cape Town to prepare herself for a possible career with the family firm, Brookes-Lemos. But art remained for her the dominant extra-curricular activity. As the enthusiastic secretary of the University Art Society, Alice organized and mounted exhibitions and was stimulated and enriched by these opportunities of meeting leading South African painters such as Le Roux Smith le Roux, Jean Welz, Alfred Krenz, and Gregoire (Boonzaaier). Only after graduation in 1948 was she free to develop her central interest and enrolled at the Continental School of Art, Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town, for a year’s tuition from Maurice van Essche. Irma Stern spotted the young student’s talent and encouraged her.
Towards the end of 1949 Alice left for London
to study painting at the Anglo-French Art Centre.
‘I was interested in the
craft of painting and to my idealistic eyes the school seemed to be
more involved with gimmicks. It was the avant-garde that was
stressed. Interesting enough, I suppose, but I wasn’t ready for it.’
Dissatisfied with her progress and the instruction at the centre,
she simultaneously attended courses in stained glass techniques at
the Central School of Art and subsequently sought further training
in painting under Victor Pasmore at the Camberwell.
It was at the Hampstead School of Art that
Alice found an atmosphere conducive to work. ‘It was run by the
Hampstead Arts Council. Only about ten students. The fees were
negligible. But twice a week the Polish expressionist, Zdzis
Ruszkowski, would come to criticise his students’ efforts. He guided
rather than taught, but he opened my eyes to colour. We shared a
respect for the permanent values in painting. My admiration for him
as an artist and man is boundless. He is still an inspiration. It
was a most concentratedly rewarding and liberating period.’ Her
teacher’s sheer love of paint, his bold use of impasto, his
preference for simplified form based on sharp observation, still
echo in Alice Elahi’s work. But there all correspondences
end.
Studio painting from the nude was emphasized as
central exercise technique at the school. Painting expeditions in
the summer to the artists’ colonies of Cornwall made Alice aware for
the first time of the challenge of the landscape. ‘It was so much
like the Cape and yet so different. The meeting of land and sea
fascinated me.’ With fellow student Mary Allum, Alice stayed on to
paint at the Cornish village of Mousehole. During the first visit
Ruszkowski was close at hand to criticize. ‘I had discovered so much
to paint.’ Back in London Alice took part in the group shows of the
Hampstead Art Society and was invited to join the Women’s
International Art Club, a group with which she later exhibited
regularly. In South Africa Alice Brooke was represented in the Van
Riebeeck Tercentenary Exhibition.
In February 1952 a first solo show at I.D.
Brooks in Cape Town celebrated a brief return home for her sister
Viriginia’s wedding. With this first exhibition the young painter
indicated the seriousness with which she approached her work. Dr
Joseph Sacks wrote in Trek: ‘In her landscapes Miss Brooke
tries to obtain perspective by colour rather than tone; but she
rejects the sharply defined colour areas of Cezanne, preferring the
more gradual merging of Bonnard. Avoiding backgrounds with the
conventional horizon where perspective is almost a foregone
conclusion, she trains the eye to look for recession in colour
itself, thus making perspective much more exciting.’ He added: ‘She
obviously enjoys her work intensely and she communicates some of her
zest to the beholder.’
On seeing her most recent work one is struck,
despite considerable changes in style, by the relevance this first
review still has for her painting. We still find the same delight in
colour, now applied with experienced sensitivity. There is still the
avoidance of easy compositional solutions, often marked by a veering
away from conventional horizons. Her approach to the problems of
perspective has remained fresh and often surprising. Above all there
is still present a spontaneous quality of marvel and a compelling
intensity in the communication of her joy.
The summer of 1952 was again spent in Cornwall
and in June 1953 Alice, with Mary Allum, undertook a painting
holiday in the South of France. ‘I recall the fantastic dappled
light at Cannes and the problems of capturing it. This acute
awareness of light has remained with me.’
In May 1954 Alice married her Iranian husband,
Mr Nassrollah Elahi, an irrigation engineer. With him she travelled
to Greece, Turkey and Iran, finding each place of call a
treasurehouse of references for her developing sensibility. With the
birth of her daughter Roshana in 1955 Alice embarked on the
additional career of motherhood. The challenge of domesticity was
met with characteristic verve and thoroughness.
In March 1957 the Elahi family – now with two
daughters – settled in Pretoria. About the local art scene of the
period Alice recalls: ‘My own ideas were in such sharp contrast with
what I found. Abstraction was having a heyday and my own search had
taken me in a different direction. I did not belong in this circle
and felt isolated. I had barely made friends with the Swedish
painter, Nona Klerck, and her husband, Jan, when they, being in the
diplomatic service, were sent to South America.’
For a good ten years Alice Elahi withdrew from
active participation in matters of art while she attended to the
needs of her growing family. But painting did not cease; it merely
became a private area of escape. Annual visits with her family (at
this time three daughters) to the Cape ensured that her inspiration
was constantly refreshed. ‘It is with the sea that I feel the
strongest affinity with nature. I need to see the sea regularly.’
Some figure compositions, landscapes, domestic
interiors, still-life studies as well as portraits were drawn and
painted during the period of apparent lull – ‘mainly for my own
pleasure’. A strong linear quality dominates these works. ‘I buoyed
my interest in art during these years by reading and studying
current trends and I kept in touch with my painter friends in
London. A drawn-out period of reflection, I suppose. 1959 saw a
brief burst of serious painting, but my concentration became
diffused again.’
It was only after the family’s move in 1965 to
an old rambling house where Alice could spread, and especially after
the birth of her youngest daughter in 1966, that the mould of
reticence was broken. ‘In 1967 I felt I was working reasonably well.
I also gave art instruction to a friend studying for her degree and
briefly taught a bit of life-drawing to Anna Voster’s students. Then
I competed in the New Signatures competition of 1968 and won the
prize for painting. It gave my self-confidence a tremendous fillip.
It was a necessary release.’
Surveying an own career calls for cool
detachment. Alice Elahi possesses this rare discipline of
self-confrontation. Few early works by her survive. ‘I destroyed a
good deal. So much of what I had done I came to consider as
inconsequential. In 1970 I learnt that my dear and talented
companion, Mary Allum, was fatally ill. I had not seen her since I
had left London 13 years previously. The shock of her death in
mid-1971 literally brought me to a halt. I became aware of limited
time and that it was no good just having dreams of being a painter;
this ambition had to be made into a reality. A letter from a
friend of Mary’s – a comparative stranger to me – verbalized my
anxiety: ‘Let her death teach you one thing: make the most of your
talents while you can.’ From the day I received that letter
something drove me to put my whole-hearted efforts and enthusiasm
into my painting. Technically it was like starting from scratch. I
had lost my fluency; my paint application was silted and heavy. But
I had matured as a person. This was no easy path I pursued. It meant
hard work and determination and dedication. And I worked.’ Early in
1972 Martin Farmer invited Alice to exhibit at his new Village
Gallery. His enthusiasm encouraged her and she eagerly accepted the
challenge.
About Alice Elahi’s one-man exhibition at the
Village Gallery in Pretoria in June 1972 Phyllis Konya wrote in the
Pretoria News: (her) intense preoccupation with light and colour
often becomes an ability to create a luminous glow at the heart of a
landscape: the sun striking water, bathing the fruit trees in
blossom, or surrounding a seaside cottage like a halo… Alice Elahi
has come a long way since her success on the New Signatures
exhibition four years ago.’ Public response confirmed the critics’
views and official recognition came with the purchase of works for
the South African embassies’ official residences in Teheran, Tel
Aviv, Washington D.C. and Munich. A harbour scene was bought for the
Pretoria Art Museum.
In May 1974 Phyllis Konya reviewed Alice’s
second exhibition in Pretoria (at the Bank Gallery):
‘Alice Elahi is an artist whose work spells warmth and
enthusiasm. She responds
whole-heartedly to the generous abundance of nature, whether it be
at sea, in mountains, or in valleys... There is a considerable
ebullience in her painting.’
A new and carefully selected collection was ready for viewing
at the Bank Gallery of the Association of Arts in Pretoria in
October 1976. Alice
Elahi had become a mature artist, a painter of authority.
For her 1976 exposition Alice chose to limit
her subject-matter to the landscape and the sea. She is engrossed by
the problems of capturing the atmosphere of the fleeting moment:
snow-covered trees in the gale, mountains in the mist, a lagoon, but
above all the sea as embraced by harbour or bay.
Atmosphere is created by the quality of light, and it is the
play of light on land and water that poses the central aesthetic
problem she endeavours to solve - light as the source of colour.
Alice works from reality because she finds the
demands of nature the most stimulating. Pretty or easy solutions to
the challenge are avoided. In the new works one is struck by a
remarkable compositional ability. Angles of observation are chosen
to emphasize the central aesthetic issues at stake, and obvious
structural props are carefully underplayed. To the uninitiated the
middleground of many of the new harbour scenes may appear devoid of
interest. The background of the landscape, the harbour buildings,
even the yachts themselves serve only as framework for the
kaleidoscopic surface of the water. It is in this area that she
seeks for the answers of colour balance, of harmony and contrast.
Three sources of light are explored: the Sun, the Moon, and
artificial illumination. The interaction of light and shadow and the
natural effects of weather and atmosphere upon light are
investigated. Romanticism is kept well under control. The challenge
is made directly to the eye.
The easy tags of -isms do not apply to Alice
Elahi’s work. Her approach, so direct in its visual appeal, would
necessarily incorporate elements of impressionism, while the
remarkable emotional charge of the paintings would invest the
deliberate distortion of the imagery with the quality of
expressionism. The mature Elahi style is a personal vehicle for the
experiences she wishes to share.
Her development has led to an increasingly
broader and freer application of paint. Brushwork is confident,
energetic, and honest. She abhors slickness. She paints in pure oil
pigment only, prefers to scrumble for opalescent depth of texture,
and disdains the easy effects of turpentine dilution. In her most
recent works the brush is less heavily loaded. She continues to
favour a moderately large scale. Her sustained investigation of the
quality of light has caused her to develop away from the more static
and linear compositions of the past towards the subtle dynamics of
the recent water studies.
Considering her working methods, one is impressed by the
careful preparation and study that goes into the achievement of the
apparently spontaneous impact of her oils which retain all the
freshness of plein-air
painting. Painted in the studio, these oils are the meticulous
end-products of translation. A study in watercolour, executed on
location, exists for every oil painting. Problems of colour, form,
and space are accounted for and resolved before transposition takes
place from one medium into the other.
Alice considers her watercolours as the most
truly creative part of her work. ‘For me painting in watercolour, as
an almost instantaneous medium, is the process of receiving and
giving.’ But she discards literally dozens of works before she
considers a watercolour of sufficient merit for translation into
oil. ‘My watercolours and oils exist side by side, but to me oil is
the final challenge. It is a difficult medium at which one has to
work. Sometimes I change
my approach in transcription, or a different mood develops in me,
and an oil works out in a different direction to that of the
watercolour that preceded it or was its inspiration. To see a
painting "shape" is an experience of joy.’
Alice is the pivot of the Elahi home in
Waterkloof, Pretoria. With two daughters, Roshana and Shirin, at
university, Nushin at high school, and 10-year-old Dorrieh to add to
the vitality of the household, Alice depends heavily upon the
patience and encouragement of a calm and intellectual husband.
Gregarious and committed, she is also deeply involved in the
art affairs of the capital. A committee member of the Friends of the
Pretoria Art Museum since 1972, she is serving a second term as
vice- chairwoman of the association.
Sustaining a hectic social life, painting time, more often
than not, means burning the midnight oil in her airy studio.
Alice Elahi has succeeded in creating an
individual way of looking at her world. Being acquainted with her
work one discovers her influence over one's own vision.
Suddenly one recognizes a typical Elahi scene and
unexpectedly a familiar view is transformed: such is the authority
of her work. As her first reviewer, Dr Sacks, remarked: ‘She trains
the eye to look.’
SOURCES:
Sacks, Dr Joseph in
Trek for March 1952
Konya, Phyllis in
Pretoria News, June 1972
Konya, Phyllis in Pretoria News, 2 May 1974
Basson, Jenny in Press Release, 22 April 1974
Personal interviews with the artist — April, May 1976,
October 1976, and February 1977.
Alice Elahi is represented in private
collections throughout South Africa and at the South African
Embassies in Teheran, Tel Aviv, Munich, and Washington DC (lMEl. She
is represented in the collection of the Pretoria Art Museum and in
the Pietersburg municipal collection. Her works are also found in
private collections in Austria. Belgium, Japan, Israel, and the
Argentine.
EXHIBITIONS
Group shows of the Hampstead Art Society 1951,
1952, 1953
Group shows of the international Women’s Art Society 1952,
1953. 1954
First solo exhibition March 1952.
l.D. Books, Cape Town
Represented in Van Riebeeck Tercentenary Collection 1952
New Signatures competition 1968, Bank Gallery, S A A A, Pretoria.
Solo exhibition June 1972, Village Gallery, Pretoria
Unisa Group Exhibition 1973, 1975
Solo exhibition May 1974, Bank Gallery, S A A A, Pretoria
Solo exhibition October 1974, Gallery S, Nelspruit
Solo exhibition October 1976, Bank Gallery, S A A A, Pretoria
Art S A Today, Durban
Arniston exhibition, 1976, Pretoria
Pretoria Artists, Cape Town, and Pretoria, 1976.