As part of the sales session devoted to Modern and Contemporary African Art on Wednesday, June,24, 2020, PIASA, in partnership with the South African auction house Aspire Auction, is delighted to present a work by the Congolese artist Mode Muntu.
Born in Lubumbashi, Congo in 1940, Mode Muntu, the eldest of 14 siblings, entered the Academy of Fine Arts in his hometown at the age of 14. The majority of his works are done in gouache on cardboard. The aesthetic he developed consists of a singular exploitation of the four-colour process and the technique of the brush. His paintings, composed of small dots opposed to each other by various colours, generally represent graphic silhouettes, male or female.
Mode Muntu (1940-1985, Congo)
Untitled
Oil on paper
Signed on the bottom right
69 x 50 cm
Provenance : Private collection, Belgium
In the work Untitled offered for sale, the dancing contours of the latter seem to accompany the frantic rhythm of the percussion. The background is the place where the bodies are transformed into decorative geometric patterns. Produced in oil on paper, it is estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000 euros.
The artist, who died in 1985 and who was often ignored by the market, was the subject of an ambitious exhibition in 2017 at Cité Miroir in Liège, where his works were similar to those of the German painter A.R. Penck or the American Keith Haring.
Two years earlier, Michaël De Plaen had signed an ambitious monograph "Mode Muntu, l'Homme Modeste”. The atypical work of this artist combining the modernity of his painting with the tradition of his culture was also presented to the Parisian public as part of the exhibition "Beauté Congo" at the Fondation Cartier in 2016.
