Claes Gallery

Brussels, Kitoko, works by Moke, Chéri Samba, Bandoma and Vitshois, 23April - 24 May 2025
For the first time, the Claes Contemporary & Modern Gallery opens its doors to an exhibition bringing together Congolese painters from the early 1970s to the present day. At the dawn of Independence, as art academies flourished across the country, young artists sought to build artistic careers outside conventional codes and pictorial traditions. In 1978, the group exhibition « Art Partout » at the Kinshasa Academy of Fine Arts, bringing together both « academicians » and « self-taught » artists, introduced to the public many artists who proclaimed themselves as « popular artists ». Narrators of urban life and guardians of collective memory, their paintings reimagined the style of their predecessors from the Hangar workshop, embracing figurative art inspired by daily life, political events, and social realities—imagery in which the entire population could recognize itself...

CAPTION: Chéri Samba, "Quel avenir pour notre art?", 1997, Acrylic on canvas, 100 x 81 cm