Seated Arab Man is a major portrait painted by Irma Stern during her second trip to Zanzibar in 1945. In this portrait, a bearded man wearing a loosely tied turban, sits in the doorway of what might be his seaside home. Through the doorway we see two Zanzibari dhows, traditional Indian Ocean sailing vessels, one with a mast and slanting, triangular lateen sail, bobbing on the ocean waves. The man’s wizened face and working hands give the impression that he has endured some life struggles, but he has a nobility about him. His turban, white linen kanzu robe and jacket suggest that he has dressed for the occasion of the sitting with the artist. His hands are peacefully folded, resting on his walking stick, and he is wearing a ring with a blue stone.

Stern’s superb handling of colour is strongly evident here – in the blue stone that picks up on the tones of the azure sea, and in the warm, earthy plum hues of the man’s jacket which subtly echo the pink door in the background and the deep carmine red of the man’s lips. Similarly, her thickly applied and impassioned expressionist brushstrokes can be seen in her depiction of the motion of the sea, and the folds and rumples in the fabric of the man’s jacket and turban.

Seated Arab Man is rendered all the more compelling by its well-preserved frame of decoratively carved wood. In a sculptural choice that was ahead of its time, Stern took the decision to work with found materials and frame her works using fragments of Zanzibari doors.

Stern travelled widely from her teenage years onwards, but her frequent journeys to Europe came to an abrupt halt with the outbreak of the Second World War. Instead, she travelled within Africa during this time, journeying first to Zanzibar and then to the Congo. The sights, sounds and smells she experienced on these expeditions fuelled her artistic creativity and energy, and gave rise to the publication of two illustrated journals; Congo (1943) and Zanzibar (1948). The war years, 1939 to 1945, are widely viewed as Stern’s finest period. The landscapes and people she encountered on her excursions appealed to her fascination with the exotic, and catalysed a creative outburst.

Critiques have been levelled against Stern for her romantic, orientalising gaze, and her tendency to treat her sitters as exotic others – as types rather than as individuals with names and personal histories of their own. Avoiding the internal gaze, she never produced any self-portraits; instead she painted portraits of others. She has been criticised for her poor understanding of political and social realities; her reactions to the so-called ‘other’ were often limited by her own perspective, cultural mindset, ego and psychological make-up.

In this portrait, the sitter does not gaze directly at the painter/viewer but rather averts eye contact. This could be interpreted as evidence of the unequal power dynamic between painter and subject. At the same time, it could be read as a respectful engagement of negotiated intimacy between a Muslim man and Western woman in 1945.

In 2021, the SABC Art Collection loaned Seated Arab Man (1945) to the Norval Foundation for inclusion in the exhibition Irma Stern: The Zanzibari Years, curated by Karel Nel.

This exhibition focused on a small body of significant works produced by Stern during her two stays in Zanzibar and the period surrounding 1939–1945.

The paintings from her time in Zanzibar include several portraits of Arab imams and men at prayer or in groups at the mosque but also include portraits of fathers and sons, sheiks, merchants and fishermen, as well as a striking series of Zanzibari women from Arabic, Indian, Bohari and Swahili communities.

The body of work is hallmarked by a series of powerful portraits with an immediacy that reflects the mutually focused engagement between Stern and her sitters. Her mark-making evokes, at times, the sweep and syncopation of Islamic calligraphy, which she encountered in the carved cartouches of the lintels of Zanzibari doors and the Islamic manuscripts that she collected. The boldness of her impasto brushwork results in a tangible embodiment of her sitters and their contexts, such that her decision to frame the works using fragments of Zanzibari doors feels completely in keeping.

The distinctive frames, made of lintels, bosses and decorative door edgings, read as windows or architectural framing devices that evoke a spirit of place. Stern returned with a number artefacts, some of which were reproduced in the partly-handmade book, Zanzibar, published by JL van Schaik in 1948. Some of these fragments that Stern brought back, as well as a complete Zanzibari door, form part of the exhibition, enabling an appreciation and analysis of the symbolic structure of the Islamic door and the pattern-language integral to this carving tradition.

This period of Stern’s work, frequently regarded as a high point of her painterly career, was the exclusive focus of the exhibition which was – in its presentation – profoundly influenced by her book, Zanzibar. The book informed not only the choice of works to be presented but also the selection of objects that provided the viewer with a glimpse into the island world in which Stern lived and worked. This exhibition thus allow[ed] viewers to imagine with empathy the context that gave rise to some of Stern’s most distinctive works.

– adapted from a text published by Norval Foundation