Where Heritage Lives On – Don’t Miss Out

April 7th 2019 – November 7th 2019

Opening of Tinga Tinga art April 7th 2.00 PM

Opening of Pioneer Tanzanian Artists to be announced

The Nairobi Gallery at The Old PC’s Oce next to Nyayo House beside Kenyatta Avenue

Private Entry and ample free parking open daily 8.30 am – 5.30 pm

About 

When Pablo Picasso first saw African masks, textiles and artifacts at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in the early 1900’s, he remarked that they were “the most beautiful and the most powerful things the human imagination has ever created” . For Picasso, these artists from Africa had created something the European artists had failed to do, ie to create art forms that perfectly blended form and function with meaning. The African artists liberated the European artists from centuries of artistic naturalism. Thus the exposure of African art changed the entire course of Western art as it moved toward abstraction and cubism – the twin pillars of modernism.

Probably the Universal Exhibition at the beginning of the last century did not include art from East Africa, but later on the art of the Makonde of Mozambique and Tanzania was another African art form that had an impact on world art. It was termed “religious, passionate and abstract ”yet much of it was produced for the Western art consumer. The Makonde had become famous for their stunning heads of carved  ebony, incised in tribal motifs and decorated with real human hair.

During the last century, the Ujumaa ( “Tree of Life”) and the Picasso-like “Shetani” (spirit) sculptures had a huge eect on Tanzanian artists like those of “Nyumbaya Sanaa” (NYS) an art centre founded in Dar es Salaam by Sister Jean Pruitt, an American Maryknoll Sister born in Michigan and raised in California. George Lilanga of NYS completed the circle of African artists inuencing European artists and vice versa after he went to Paris in 1976 and saw an exhibition by Picasso, and proclaimed Picasso his favourite artist of all time. Robina Ntila was another artist in the stable of NYS.

Joseph Murumbi, co-founder of African Heritage bought many Makonde gures in ebony, limestone and ivory in Dar es Salaam, which
are now in the Murumbi Collections. There are also artworks on Masonite boards by rst generation “TingaTinga” artists which he sold to the Kenyan government in 1976 which are displayed in the Murumbi Gallery at the Kenya National Archives.

Pioneer artist Edward Saidi Tingatinga (1932-1972) began his career in the 1960s with some of the new materials which had become available, using scavenged masonite ceiling boards for canvases and bicycle enamel paint from one of his early careers as a bicycle repairman. Before long, the original TingaTinga realized he could make a living painting full time by drawing on the folklore of his Ndonde and Makua heritage who painted similar designs on their clay houses. Soon he was training his family members and friends to assist him. His art is quite different from the recent TingaTinga copies ones sees in all the markets of East Africa. It was more naïve, usually with a plain background and one subject such as the spotted leopard which was most popular in this art.

Sadly, TingaTinga was shot dead during an automobile chase in Dar es Salaam in 1972, when he was mistaken as a burglar and killed in a hail of bullets from the police. His memory lives on through all his many disciples, with new generations of painters continuing to paint, now mainly on canvas rather than on the masonite ceiling boards, as most of their customers are tourists and visitors to Africa.

Recently an original painting by Edward Saidi TingaTinga sold for a record sum at the Art Auction East African 2019 in Nairobi, the most ever recorded for an African artist at this auction. There is a huge TingaTinga school of painters still nourishing in Tanzania with hundreds of adherents painting TingaTinga-like designs on everything from key rings to wooden trays and handbags. In recent years TINGA TINGA birds and animals and other creatures have lent inspiration to a series of children’s books and TV programs and even a musical which is gracing the stages of New York’s Broadway.

However the images used in these endeavours bear little resemblance to the original TingaTinga artworks from the mid l970’s. At the recent musical in Nairobi there were only one image which can be traced to the original TingaTinga art. That is the hornbill (which is considered a messenger bird to the spirit world in many African societies). The hornbill is almost a trademark image in TingaTinga art, found in almost every painting no matter the main subject.

This exhibition features works from the second and third generation of TingaTinga artists. 

The exhibitions at Nairobi Gallery are dedicated to Sister Jean Pruitt and credit for information above is given to