Robert Hodgins – Hotel with Landscape (Spy), 1996

Robert Hodgins (1920-2010)
Hotel with Landscape (spy) (1996)
Oil on canvas / 898 x 1200 mm
CCAC #0116

Donated by Linda Goodman, Goodman Gallery

In this dreamscape painting by Robert Hodgins, an inconspicuous figure in a hat and dark glasses watches a fragmented and severed body float above a monolithic skyscraper in a desolate landscape. The painting suggests the trauma of South Africa’s transition into democracy and particularly the surfacing of brutal assassinations, tortures and assaults that characterised the Apartheid governments reign.