Lot no. 02
Title: Viken
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 100cm x 100cm
Indicated value: ZAR 35 000
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Lot no. 02
Title: Viken
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 100cm x 100cm
Indicated value: ZAR 35 000
Russell Travers was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1960. In 1981 he fled South Africa for Sweden, where he was granted asylum as a war resister and deserter from the South African Defence Force, where he had served in both the army and navy.
In Sweden he worked as an art director for various advertising agencies. He went on to work for Svensk Filmindustri as a presenter for a satellite television programme co-produced by Sky TV, which saw him travelling throughout Scandinavia interviewing pop and rock personalities and generally reviewing the pop culture scene.
Russell paints images collected from various sources, including artists, old family photographs and children’s drawings. Other inspiration is referenced from books, station walls and the scrawls on buildings of inner-city ghettos – he even uses technical drawings of aircraft, weapons systems and rocket motors. Whatever the images, they are defaced and compressed, and their formations and patterns recreated and layered in a coloured and multi-textured way. His new European Series of paintings are Abstract Expressionist in nature in keeping with art trends in Europe. The German painter Gerhardt Richter has figured extensively as his principle influence in this new series, which breaks with his earlier Pop Art style.
Russell still resides in Sweden but has a daylight studio in Cape Town, which he uses as a base for his expanding repertoire of large-format oil paintings. He has sold extensively to art buyers through various galleries in South Africa and internationally.