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Le Hangar
Bela Sara painting in the D Section of the
Académie des Beaux-Arts d’Elisabethville,
ca. 1954–55. (Photo: Laurent Moonens)
Bela Sara
A native of Chad from the Sara tribe, Bela was born in Fort-Archambault in 1920. In 1940, Bela became the orderly for the French officer and artist Pierre Romain-Desfossés, with whom he would remain until the latter’s death in 1954. Bela accompanied Romain-Desfossés throughout his African journey, from Brazzaville in 1941 to Elisabethville
(now Lubumbashi).
After the death of Romain-Desfossés in 1954, Bela briefly remained in Elisabethville.
In 1956, he left for Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) where he likely spent several months working with Maurice Alhadeff (Rhodes 1895–Brussels 1972), an industrialist who
worked in the Congo as a patron and founded an art school (Zaïre Review, no. 109, 7 September 1970, 16–19). Following his time at the Alhadeff studio, Bela returned to Brazzaville, where he was accepted into the Poto-Poto school of painting. The school was founded in 1951 by the French painter Pierre Lods in Poto-Poto, a suburb of Brazzaville. According to a brochure produced for the 20th anniversary of the school, Bela was still working there in 1971, under the name Bela Borkemas.
In Brazzaville, Bela was already famous for the collection of popular fables he had published with Pierre Romain-Desfossés—Gutemberg dans la Brousse [Gutenberg of the Bush]—for which he engraved the text and illustrations with a knife into wooden blocks. In Elisabethville, Romain-Desfossés had found Bela painting directly with his fingers. It was this technique of finger painting that he would continue to perfect, providing his work a distinctive character. Bela took an interest in marine life—likely influenced by his patron—in hunting scenes, in the threatening bush and in moonlit ritual dances. An unparalleled colourist, he juggled lively and contrasting colours, not hesitating to use tones that were beyond realism. His finger painting technique, which precluded distinct outlines, provided rhythm and tension to his compositions.
Reference:
Lihau Mamiyo Moseka Ligo 1980, 66–68; La naissance 1992, 45; Beauté Congo 2015, 362; Vaudiau 1958; brochure for the exhibition 20th anniversary of the Poto-Poto School of Painting, Dierickx Archives; P. Loos Archives.
Ilunga was a Muluba from Shaba province. He joined Pierre Romain-Desfossés’ studio just after Pili Pili and Kilima and exhibited in Brussels and Paris in 1949, along with Pili Pili, Bela, Nkulu and Kaballa. His meticulous form of naturalist paintings was similar to that of Pili Pili, with whom he collaborated regularly, in particular on the creation of a series of panels in 1950 that formed part of the decoration of the Charlesville liner on the Belgium-Congo line (Antwerp-Matadi). According to an account from Mwenze in 1973, it appears that he left to live in Kayeye, where he abandoned his old style in order to paint landscapes.
Reference:
32.422/50, Nov. 1950—P. Loos Archives; Fabian 2011—conversation with Mwenze, 1973; La naissance 1992, 52; Beauté Congo 2015, 363.
Norbert Ilunga
Pili Pili Mulongoy
The son of a fisherman from the Lualaba people, Pili Pili was born in Ngolo around 1914, in the district of Kongolo, Katanga province. In 1944, he settled in Lubumbashi where he worked at the Travaux publics [Government services] as a house painter and plumber before joining the studio of Pierre Romain-Desfossés in 1946.
Pili Pili was the studio’s first student; he was followed a few months later by Oscar Kilima, Norbert Ilunga and Bela. Pili Pili quickly became one of the studio’s most talented artists. He offered up an extremely refined and meticulous style of painting, presenting African nature in all of its stages, following the cycles of life and death. Deer graze peacefully in a vision of nature that is apparently without danger, while civets, snakes and other predators hunt birds and eggs in the trees. In another painting, a snake trying to seize a bird’s eggs is in turn attacked by the wading bird protecting its nest. Today’s predator becomes tomorrow’s prey.
Pili Pili executed these animal scenes with a great mastery of colour and nuance. A meticulous painter, he took great care with the outlines and details. He left no empty spaces, which, when he began, would be filled with a multitude of circles or tufts of grass, and then later with delicate, parallel strokes of bright colours.
In 1954, after the death of Romain-Desfossés, the Le Hangar studio was integrated into Laurent Moonens’ Académie des Beaux-Arts d’Elisabethville as the ‘D Section’. Pili Pili became an assistant and remained there until 1959, when he became a supervisor at a high school in Katuba. Retiring in 1970, he painted until the end of his life in Lubumbashi in 2007.
Reference:
Fabian 2011—conversation with Pili Pili, 1979; Lihau Mamiyo Moseka Ligo 1980, 60–62; La naissance 1992, 47; Beauté Congo 2015, 366.
Pili Pili painting in the D Section of the
Académie des Beaux-Arts d’Elisabethville, ca. 1954–55.
(Photo: Laurent Moonens)
Pili Pili Mulongoy
Hunting Scene
Oil on paper, 46 x 56 cm
Signed ‘Pilipili’, ca. 1950
Pierre Loos Collection
Photo: Michael De Plaen
Pili Pili Mulongoy
Untitled (Elephant Hunt)
Oil on paper, 37 x 50.5 cm
Signed ‘Pilipili’, ca. 1950
Pierre Loos Collection
Photo: Michael De Plaen
Mwenze Kibwanga painting in the D Section of the Académie des Beaux-Arts d’Elisabethville, ca. 1954–55.
(Photo: Laurent Moonens)
Mwenze Kibwanga
The son of a weaver, Mwenze Kibwanga was born in 1925 in Kilumba, in the Malemba-Nkulu territory, Katanga province. He died in Lubumbashi in 1999. Mwenze began attending classes at the Protestant mission of Mwanza in 1934, where he also took drawing lessons. In 1942, he left the village to settle in Elisabethville and continued his primary education with the Methodists for another two years.
Forced to earn a living, he began drawing and was spotted by a Belgian, Gaston Pletinckx in 1946, who took him under his wing and encouraged him to specialise in portraiture. When he joined Le Hangar in 1950, Mwenze already had a specific artistic path and style, which he would quickly abandon. He developed his own style, bringing his subjects to life through a technique of hatching and parallel lines alternating between light and dark shades that followed the shapes of human beings, animals and vegetation. By reproducing the geometry left by the blows of the adze on wood, Mwenze developed a form of ‘sculptural painting’; he developed this technique by taking inspiration from sculptors of traditional statues, as he explained in an interview with anthropologist Johannes Fabian in Lubumbashi in 1973.
Mwenze painted nature, a subject dear to Congolese artists, but also afforded an important place to man in his works. What interested him most was village life which, along with his childhood memories, he perceived to be an authentically African experience. Pierre Romain-Desfossés spoke about him in these terms:
“Mwenze’s technique is made of short lines that follow the form of objects, revealing a more complex being than the average native. His painting expresses psychological conflicts and displays a rare imaginative power. Sometimes he even explores the field of eroticism. In the intertwining of human forms, for example, Mwenze blends his own subjectivity with material representation to achieve a perfect balance. Within an atmosphere of tragedy, his bacchanalia of goats and snakes have such an ‘expressivity’ of tone and matter that it could be said that Mwenze makes colour sing. Indeed, it is through the use of colour that he accentuates the emotive tension of the conflicts that he represents. There are among his works several remarkable compositions; one can point to a battle between a man and a crocodile which, through its undulating rhythm, reminds one of certain El Greco paintings, even though the technique and inspiration are vastly different. Mwenze’s painting displays a violence in its subject matter that contrasts with the harmony of expression. He has remarkably rich sources of inspiration and is constantly trying something new. Above all he has raised the level of indigenous art by introducing to it the personal sentiment of the painter.”
Upon the death of Pierre Romain-Desfossés in 1954, Mwenze became an assistant in the D Section created at Laurent Moonens’ Académie des Beaux-Arts d’Elisabethville. In 1958, he accompanied Laurent Moonens to the Universal Exhibition in Brussels, in the company of three pupils, Kabongo, Kabuya and Mwembia, where they worked on designing the Congo pavilion. Under the direction of Claude Charlier, Mwenze became a teacher and continued his career at the Académie des Beaux-Arts until his retirement.
Reference:
Fabian 2011—conversation with Pili Pili, 1973 and 1974; Lihau Mamiyo Moseka Ligo 1980, 63–66; La naissance 1992, 49; Beauté Congo 2015, 364.
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