Izak & Walter

The story behind the screen-print

In the early 1980’s I remember standing on my Victorian balcony in Long Street, Cape Town one day. Looking across the road, I saw an old, grey Rolls Royce draw up and park in front of the café down below. Out clambered a bizarre figure, midway between a tramp and a clown. The locals looked on, amazed. It was Professor Walter Battiss, King of Fook Island, wearing his Fook Rex jersey. He crossed the road and rang my doorbell. I made tea for my old friend. Walter told me that Thomas Baines had also had a studio a way down from mine in Long Street.

Professor Battiss wanted to get hold of Jannie van Vuuren who used to print screen-prints for him in Pretoria. My friend Jake Lintvelt knew where to find Jannie. We headed around the corner to Jake’s photography studio in Pepper Street. In Jake’s studio the idea occurred to me to ask him to take a few photographs of Walter and me. Professor Battiss kindly agreed. The three of us started looking around at props and things, and Walter suggested that we do the first one au naturèl.

A year or so later, whilst visiting my brother Francois in Johannesburg, I had one of the photographs enlarged. I used it to make a collage for the screen-print. I cut some pieces of the photograph away, used airbrush on another part, and paint elsewhere. I added some new bits and pieces – the cat, bugle, mielies, elephant and so on. I had given my brother two pots with a small mielie growing in each to place alongside the stairs to his front door. I planted the mielies in memory of Walter. In his garden in Pretoria, he always grew mielies instead of flowers. By the time I completed the artwork, the mielies in the pots were full-grown with ripe heads of corn.

I had the colour-separation for the print done in Johannesburg, and went back to Cape Town. I had the edition of Izak & Walter printed, and signed it in 1984. Sadly, Battiss never saw it completed, for he had already passed away in 1982.

Zak Benjamin (Izak Benjamin de Villiers)

HOME