The Pretoria Art Museum Catalogue, signed by Edoardo Villa (1989)

The exhibition catalogue published by the Pretoria Art Museum in 1989. This document marks a pivotal moment in 20th-century South African art history, capturing a legendary creative partnership at its peak.

Celebrating a 25th Anniversary Milestone

The joint exhibition held between August and October 1989 was a flagship event curated to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Pretoria Art Museum. To mark a quarter-century of the institution's existence, the museum brought together two of South Africa's most formidable artistic stalwarts: the Italian-born master sculptor Edoardo Villa and the renowned painter and printmaker Cecil Skotnes.

The Amadlozi Group Connection

While this specific catalogue documents their dual retrospective in 1989, Villa and Skotnes shared a deep history that shaped the trajectory of modernist art in South Africa. In the early 1960s, along with artists like Sydney Kumalo, Cecily Sash, and Giuseppe Cattaneo, they formed the influential Amadlozi Group (coined by Skotnes, meaning "in the spirit of the ancestors"). Their collective mission was to fuse European modernist techniques—such as Villa’s cubist-influenced steel sculptures and Skotnes’s woodcuts—with indigenous African idioms and forms.

A Rare Contemporary Autograph

Authentic signature in blue ink directly above Edoardo Villa’s portrait: "Villa 89". Signed during the year of the retrospective, it anchors this particular copy directly to the timeline of the exhibition, likely signed by the artist at the opening at either the Pretoria Art Museum or the subsequent run at the Goodman Gallery in Sandton.

245mm x 245mm

Surface wear to both front and back.

R1,250