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Precursors
Albert Lubaki
Untitled (Chief)
Watercolour on paper, 35 x 25 cm
Signed ‘A. Lubaki’, ca. 1927–29
Felix Collection
Photo: Maureen Vincke
Albert Lubaki
Born in 1894/5 in Thysville (now Mbanza-Ngungu) in the province of Bas-Congo (now Kongo Central), Albert Lubaki was originally an ivory sculptor. Having emigrated to the Kasai-Oriental province, he married Antoinette, the daughter of Chief Lumpungu from the village of Cabinda. While working as a sculptor, selling his figurines along the railway line that linked Port-Francqui (now IIebo) to Elisabethville in Katanga (now Lubumbashi), he also specialised in painting earthen walls.
It was in 1926, in Elisabethville, that Lubaki met the Belgian administrator Georges Thiry who was waiting for his post in Bukama. Eager to preserve this ephemeral art, Thiry suggested that Lubaki transcribe his works onto paper and gave him watercolour blocks for this purpose. According to letters preserved between Lubaki and Thiry, Lubaki appears to have remained in Elisabethville until 23 October 1926, the date he left for Bukama to return to Cabinda, from where he wrote to Thiry between February 1927 and 1932.
Born in 1894/5 in Thysville (now Mbanza-Ngungu) in the province of Bas-Congo (now Kongo Central), Albert Lubaki was originally an ivory sculptor. Having emigrated to the Kasai-Oriental province, he married Antoinette, the daughter of Chief Lumpungu. In his pictorial production, Albert Lubaki retained the habits of the ivory-worker, such as a rapid and light pencil outline before filling in the shapes with sweeping flat areas of colour and nuanced shading that sometimes bore no relation to reality. He nearly always surrounded the paper with a coloured margin forming an irregular frame around the scene. Routinely painting by candlelight, he did not take inspiration from models, and was unconcerned with perspective, nor with background or shadow. Instead, he gave free expression to an innate sense of colour and composition, with his subjects arranged in remarkable harmony.
Albert Lubaki
Untitled (Fish)
Watercolour on paper, 39 x 42 cm
Signed ‘A. Lubaki’, ca. 1927–29
Pierre Loos Collection
Photo: Pierre Buch
Lubaki took inspiration from his knowledge of Africa—of the Congo, the bush and popular traditions—which immediately appealed to Georges Thiry. Animals, hunting scenes or daily life intermingled with the sounds of legends, fables and local proverbs. Other works reflected contact with the colonial white population and the ways of life they had brought with them to the Congo—a strange and fascinating world through which moved trains, cars, bikes and aeroplanes.
Georges Thiry collected Lubaki’s watercolours and sent them to Brussels, to Gaston-Denys Périer, a high-ranking senior servant and aficionado of Congolese art who went to great lengths to make the artist’s work known to a European audience. The first exhibition of Albert Lubaki’s work took place in 1929, at the inauguration of the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, bringing together 163 watercolours by the artist. Lubaki’s works were then exhibited at the Ethnography Museum in Geneva in 1930, and at Galerie Charles-Auguste Girard in Paris. In 1931, his watercolours were presented at the colonial exhibition in Vincennes and at the Prima mostra internazionale d’arte coloniale in Rome.
Reference:
Thiry 1982, 13–24; Périer 1929a and 1929b; Périer 1936, 4–7; La naissance 1992, 39; Beauté Congo 2015, 364–65.
Djilatendo
Djilatendo was born in 1889/90 in Luluabourg (now Kananga), in Kasai-Occidental province, and died at the end of the 1950s/early 1960s. It was in 1929 in Ibanshe, on the road between Mweka and Luebo, that the Belgian administrator Georges Thiry met Djilatendo. His real name was most likely Tshyela Ntendu, which means ‘stone-thrower’ in the Lulua language.
The chief of a Lulua family, he was forty at the time and had three wives and numerous children. He worked as an engraver, but it was the paintings that he created on earthern walls that most interested Georges Thiry. During their meeting, Thiry came upon a superb fresco representing a band of soldiers playing bugles. As he had done with Albert Lubaki, Thiry proposed that Djilatendo draw these images on paper with ink and watercolour.
Djilatendo took his inspiration, like Lubaki, from the world of the bush, local stories and daily life. His works illustrate the lives of indigenous people, white settlers and the forces of law and order. Djilatendo’s highly poetic world was not always easy to understand, so Thiry would occasionally jot down Djilatendo’s explanations on the back of drawings. Djilatendo drew in a linear and stylised way with little colour. Many works were done simply in black ink. On others, he used a bit of purple, red or green. Human silhouettes, nearly always in profile and without eyes, are structured around a rectangle that forms the body, often divided by two diagonal lines linking the opposite corners.
Djilatendo was also fond of geometric compositions. His works harmoniously combine checks, triangles, diamonds, waves and other elements that intermingle with the graphic arts of the Kuba, in particular the Velours du Kasai (Kasai Velvet). He often married styles, combining abstract and figurative elements in the same work. He also worked in different registers, layering scenes, or worked onto friezes, with an acute sense of rhythm and repetition.
Djilatendo (Tshyela Ntendu)
Untitled (Composition with Raffia Textile Patterns)
Watercolour on paper, 91 x 120 cm
Signed ‘Moi Biduaya tshela tendu Ibandi’, 8 juillet 1930
Felix Collection; Ex Gerard Family
Collection, Namur, Belgium
Photo: Maureen Vincke
Djilatendo (Tshyela Ntendu)
Untitled (Cyclist)
Watercolour on paper, 31 x 48 cm
Signed ‘Ibashe Tshelatende’, 1931
Felix Collection
Photo: Maureen Vincke
Impressed by the modernity of Djilatendo’s work, Georges Thiry sent the paintings to Gaston-Denys Périer in Brussels to present them on their own or alongside Lubaki’s watercolours. They were shown for the first time in 1931 at the colonial exhibition in Vincennes, and at the Prima mostra internazionale d’art coloniale in Rome. In the same year, the Galerie le Centaure in Brussels, directed by Walter Schwarzenberg, exhibited his work alongside the Belgian surrealists René Magritte and Paul Delvaux. It was also in 1931 that Djilatendo illustrated a selection of fables from Kasai which were published by Badibanga in the collection L’éléphant qui marche sur des oeufs [The Elephant That Walked on Eggs], published by Églantine in Brussels. In March 1932, his work was shown at the Ethnography Museum in Geneva, in 1933 at the colonial office in Brussels and then at the colonial exhibition in Luxembourg. Four works were reproduced in the Belgian Congo section of the official guide for the International Exhibition in Brussels in 1935. They would be exhibited again in 1938 at L’imaige Nostre-Dame in Brussels, then in 1947 at La Fleur en Papier Doré, and finally in 1949 at the Salles des Fêtes on the Meir in Antwerp.
After the deterioration of the relationship between Georges Thiry and Gaston-Denys Périer, and with Thiry’s return to Belgium, contact with Djilatendo ceased. During his missions to the Congo, Belgian historian Jan Vansina tracked down Djilatendo in January 1953 in Ibanshe, where he was still exhibiting geometric motifs painted on loincloths. There is no record of Djilatendo after 1953.
Reference:
Thiry 1982, 33–34; Périer 1931; Périer 1936, 7–9; La naissance 1992, 41; Beauté Congo 2015, 363; Vansina 2010, 162.
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