Since the 1980s, Pierre Loos has created a unique collection of modern Congolese works of art made between the 1920s and 1960s. It is with a friend antiquarian, to whom he visits to research of African objects, that Pierre discovers a folder in which are preserved drawings in pencil, watercolor or oil, signed by Bela, Pilipili, Mwenze and other less known artists. Aware that these drawings are the treasures made in the 1950s at the workshop of the Hangar in Elisabethville (Lubumbashi), he goes on a quest and manages to gather a hundred works to form the core of a collection that counts among the strongest and most iconic artistic creations of a continent.
Part of this collection was the first section of the successful exhibition Beauté Congo, 1926 - 2015, Congo Kitoko, held at the Fondation Cartier in 2014 and 2015. This exhibition revealed to the general public the quality and the diversity of a major artistic production, although until then almost unknown to the general public
This modern Congolese art is striking for its singularity and modernity. We owe these testimonies of scenes of villages, life in nature, hunting and fishing to visionary art lovers that were Georges Thiry, Belgian colonial official in the 1920s and after the war to Pierre Romain-Desfossés. Both, at different times, have seen and identified, encouraged and inspired the talent of artists who used the huts as a support for their art.
Lot 653 - Mwenze Kibwanga (1925-1999)
Sans titre, 1963
Estimate : 6 000 - 9 000 €
By supplying these naïve people with paper and colors, Thiry and Romain-Desfossés allowed the artists to express themselves, to tell their fables on a continent where oral tradition prevails. They helped to witness a bygone era, to write a page in the history of art, can be one of the first written aside from Western hegemony.
A book to be released in late 2019 will help to increase awareness of this collection, rightly considered one of the most important in the world, but also to give this Congolese painting the letters of nobility it deserves.
This is the first time that such a collection of modern museum-quality Congolese works of art has been offered on the art market.
