Invitation with original, signed etching by Ernest Ullmann (1975)

The Artist: Ernest Ullmann’s Satirical Eye

The artwork featured on the invitation is a signed, original etching by Ernest Ullmann (1900–1975), dated '75.

Ullmann was a prominent German-born Jewish artist and designer who emigrated to South Africa in the 1930s to escape Nazi Germany. He became highly influential in the local design landscape, creating major public sculptures, tapestries, and exhibition designs.

This particular image is a classic example of his sharp, witty social commentary. It satirizes the typical gallery opening crowd—figures in formal wear holding cocktail glasses (skemerkelkies), turning their backs to the art to gossip, preen, and mingle.

Tragically, because the invitation is dated March 1975 and Ullmann passed away later that same year, this etching captures a final commentary on the very commercial art scene he spent decades helping to shape.

The Venue: The Pieter Wenning Gallery

The invitation was issued by the Pieter Wenning Gallery, which was one of Johannesburg’s most prestigious and long-standing commercial art institutions.
Named after the pioneering South African impressionist painter Pieter Wenning (who died in 1921), the gallery was established in the mid-1940s by Everard Read before he went on to open his eponymous gallery.

Located in Fox Street in Johannesburg's central business district, it was the premier commercial venue for elite South African and imported international art. The note regarding the "enlarged Gallery" on the invitation points to a physical expansion during a period of high economic prosperity and booming local art investment.

The Socio-Political Context: Bicultural Bureaucracy

The layout of the text is a textbook example of South African institutional printing from the apartheid era. The strict, mirror-image bilingualism (English on the left, Afrikaans on the right) was a legal and cultural norm for any public-facing enterprise seeking establishment credibility.

The translation of "Cocktails" to the distinctively formal, somewhat poetic Afrikaans "Skemerkelkies" (literally "dusk little chalices") beautifully highlights the linguistic efforts of the era to codify a sophisticated, modern Afrikaans terminology for high society events.

The Ephemera Factor

From a collector’s or archivist's perspective, this piece represents a rare survival of a "functional" object. While Ullmann's larger bronze sculptures and tapestries are housed in institutional collections, these high-quality, print-illustrated gallery invitations were meant to be thrown away after the event. Finding one preserved in clean condition, complete with a crisp plate mark from the original etching, offers a direct, tangible connection to a single Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. in the autumn of 1975.

The outside is foxed; etching clean and in good condition.
300mm x 240mm (program size).

R1,000