The Norval Foundation in Cape Town is, through most of 2024, showing three concurrent and museum-quality art exhibitions, all focused on quite different SA artists — painters Alexis Preller and Cinga Samson, and sculptor Walter Oltmann.
Oltmann’s exhibition, titled Metamorphosis, is a marvellous and charming insight into the work of one of the country’s foremost sculptors. A long-time lecturer at Wits, from where he holds a PhD in Fine Arts, he has combined his academic career with his artistic practice, to great acclaim. Oltmann’s works have been included in exhibitions across SA and abroad, including in China and Italy. He has been the recipient of the Ampersand Fellowship, the Sasol Wax Art Award, the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Visual Art in 2001, and the Edoardo Villa Extraordinary Award for Sculpture in 2022. This latter award also included a residency, enabling Oltmann to produce an extensive body of work which was undertaken in the Villa-Legodi workshop at NIROX Sculpture Park where the works were publicly shown. A related publication, In Time, is forthcoming. The show at Norval includes multiple pieces drawn from this body of work.