The South African years

She also recalled that Herman Wald  maintained  a   distance from  his students and, though courteous, did  not allow them  to get too close to him.[i]  Bunny Stern, née Hatchuel, another of  Wald’s pupils, also remembered him warmly. [ii] Herman Wald offered live model classes who formed  part of the  vibrant studio  ambience. One of his more controversial pupils was  Harold Rubin (b. 1932) who landed  in hot water with the South African conservative church and was tried for blasphemy. He also carried out  a series of drawings depicting the Sharpeville massacre of 21st March 1960, in which he criticised the brutality of the apartheid régime. Isaac Witkin (1936-2006)  was one of Herman Wald’s youngest pupils who later went to London, where he studied under Anthony Caro and worked as an assistant to Henry Moore. [iii] He became part of the British abstract movement called  “New Generation Sculpture”. Elizabeth Couzyn, wife of the famous opera singer, Dawie Couzyn,  worked in the studio until they left for Vienna for her husband to pursue his singing career. There she became a pupil of Oskar Kokoschka. Herman Wald opened one of her exhibitions in Johannesburg with words of warm praise for her work.[iv]

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The South African reception of the art of Herman Wald

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Herman Wald’s work started to attract public interest and as early as 1939 he featured in the popular South African Theatre, Music and Dance Magazine.[v] His  exhibitions received positive reviews in the press. The art critics of  the newspapers ‘The Star’, the ‘Rand Daily Mail’ and  the ‘Sunday Express’ were favourably disposed towards his work.  But it also must be said that their comments were at times somewhat a bit insipid.  Some of the reporters  seemed not to quite grasp the depth  of his work,  nor could they contextualise its significance within the modernist movement, for example:

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“Whether one is attracted or repelled by these works, one cannot but admit their challenge.”[vi] 

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 “… a constant interest in the symbolism of the human form”.[vii]

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“Herman Wald is by religion an artist”.[viii]

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The reporters repeatedly mention his pacifist world view  which he must have emphasised during the  interviews, without, however,  presenting an  aesthetic analysis of how these convictions were realized  in his work:

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 “He believes the most important thing an artist can do is to use his art in the cause of peace.”[ix]

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A  review which appeared in the East London Daily Dispatch about an exhibition of drawings by Herman Wald sums up the general lack of understanding of modern art and the artist’s place in it,  although the critic tried hard:

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“This exhibition is well worth seeing, and those who go should keep in mind the fact that this type of art is not decadence from the art of the old masters, nor just another passing fancy, but an art which has grown out of the old via the machine age…”[x]

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But gradually the critics gained  a deeper insight into the art of Herman Wald and the Johannesburg public began to purchase his work.  Edgar Bernstein, a distinguished Jewish  scholar, expressed admiration for his work in several   articles which appeared, however, not in the local press but   in the South African Jewish Times.

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Also in the Jewish press the  art historian  Dora Sowden summed it up   with her  evaluations  “At its best, Herman Wald lets his work speak for itself in a very individual style, and it is a matter of choice whether his intellectual assertion or the sheer mobility of his skill is more immediately effective.[xi]

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Joseph Sachs, with a wider historical perspective,  recognized that Wald  had inherited the neo-baroque spirit of his Viennese mentor, Anton Hanak and that “He loves to show the human form in violent tension, revealing the inner conflict and frustration of our generation. He uses the human figure to express an idea.”[xii]  Sachs  also recognised in Wald’s work the fine  line between his strength and his weakness, namely  his  “preoccupation to express thought and emotion rather than the relation of masses and planes.”  He saw that this characteristic “often forces his hand, producing works which are more remarkable on the surface than in the mass”, and concludes that :  “He has, too, plenty of enthusiasm and spirit and a lyrical feeling which is often poetic rather than plastic in character”[xiii]   These Jewish art critics and art historians wrote about Herman Wald in the Jewish Guild’s  New Year Annual, the  Jewish Affairs and Jewish Times. These   magazines and periodicals were generally read by members of the Jewish community and not by the wider  public.

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Despite these very encouraging receptions of his art in South Africa, Herman Wald’s thoughts were elsewhere.  He was  preoccupied with his   forebodings of war and  the  fear for the lives  of his mother and  his family in Hungary.   The first work which he completed in  South Africa was  entitled “Gassed”. It alluded to the trenches in the First World War, but it eerily  foreshadowed what was  to come.  

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