Andrew Hart Adler Aqua Lady II Mixed media on canvas 123 x 97 cm R40,000

Andrew Hart Adler Aqua Lady III

Mixed media on canvas 192 x 137 cm R125,000

Andrew Hart Adler Aqua Lady IV Mixed media on canvas 123 x 97 cm R40,000

Andrew Hart Adler Aqua Lady V

Mixed media on canvas 192 x 137 cm R125,000

Andrew Hart Adler Aqua Lady VII Mixed media on canvas 123 x 97 cm R40,000

Andrew Hart Adler Aqua Lady VIII

Mixed media on canvas 97 x 77 cm R32,000

Andrew Hart Adler Aqua Lady IX, 2016 Mixed media on canvas 97 x 77 cm R32,000

Andrew Hart Adler Aqua Lady XI, 2016

Mixed media on canvas 60 x 80 cm R19,500

Andrew Hart Adler Aqua Lady XIV, 2016

Mixed media on canvas 105 x 135 cm R45,000

Andrew Hart Adler Aqua Lady XVI, 2016 Mixed media on canvas 123 x 97 cm R40,000

For the past 35 years, Andrew Hart Adler has been showing his

work on both sides of the Atlantic in the USA and Europe, and

now in South Africa, where he has established his studio in

Woodstock, Cape Town.

His journey from the shores of the United States to the foot of

Africa has been anything but straightforward. Born in New

York City, Adler moved as a young child to London, where his

mother sent him to an academy of art from the age of seven.

With the death of their mother, his brother Christopher and he

returned to the USA to live with their father, Broadway

composer Richard Adler.

After completing his studies at the University of North Carolina

at Chapel Hill, Adler became the assistant to Willem de

Kooning for two years. A summer in Paris turned into fifteen

years. Then six years in Munich were followed by eight years in

the south of France, with a period in Costa Rica, before a

return to New York City and Sag Harbor. Adler has been driven

by restlessness and rootlessness from place to place, always

considering his studio his home.

His artworks have been exhibited even more widely – across

the USA and Europe, alongside Masters like Picasso, Matisse,

Chagall, Pollock and de Kooning.

His second passion in life – rowing – brought him to Cape

Town for the first time in 1987 for a few short weeks. He

relocated here permanently a number of years later, setting

up his studio in industrial Woodstock.

Travel has always inspired him and been a necessary part of

his work, but it is here in Cape Town for the first time that he

has felt centred. This centring has given rise to a body of work

that is breaking new ground. These fresh, confident pieces

draw on Adler’s own history as well as the history of art, but

find common focus in their freedom of expression and

seeming spontaneity. They straddle the tense line between

abstraction and figuration with a mixture of oil, dry pigment,

silicon wax, gel medium and ink jet printing.