YUSUF ADEBAYO CAMERON GRILLO (NIGERIAN, BORN 1934) ‘Hausa charms vendor’ signed and dated ‘GRILLO/ 64’ (lower left) oil on board 91.5 x 60.5cm (36 x 23 13/16in). Tshibumba Kanda Matulu was born in 1947 in Lubumbashi, under Belgian rule. He originally intended to become a teacher, but his studies were interrupted by the violence following the Katanga secession in 1960. Determined to find an alternative way of educating his community, Tshibumba began to experiment with the medium of paint. His chief aim was to create a visual narrative documenting Congolese history from pre-colonial times to the present. An autodidact, Tshibumba had no formal artistic instruction. He finally established himself as a professional artist in 1969. His output was prodigious until 1981; no further works have appeared since then. It is not clear why the artist suddenly ceased production. Zaire suffered an economic crisis in the early 1980s; it is possible Tshibumba was simply responding to a decline in demand. Recent attempts to contact the artist have proved unsuccessful. Tshibumba’s aesthetic is an example of Popular Painting, a genre that emerged in Zaire in the 1920s. The style witnessed a resurgence after the Republic of Congo was granted independence in 1960. Young artists desired an aesthetic that expressed their distinct national identity. The self-taught artists who pioneered Popular Painting primarily depicted everyday occurrences in the urban centres of Kinshasa and Lubumbashi. Their naive style offered an alternative to the prevailing aesthetic taught in Western art academies. The Congolese artists of the 1960s and 70s began to create works that explored their ancestral origins, colonial history and aspirations for the newly-independent nation. These seven paintings are from Tshibumba’s narrative series The History of Zaire. They depict key moments in Congolese history, from the arrival of the British explorer Sir Henry Stanley to the massacre of university students by Mobutu’s commandos. The works are highly personal interpretations, shaped by the artist’s childhood experiences of Belgian rule. The series also openly criticizes President Mobutu, challenging the Second Republic’s official narratives and exposing the regime’s economic mismanagement and corruption. Chronologically, the earliest event depicted is Sir Henry Stanley’s arrival in the Congo. The moment was of great symbolic importance to the artist, representing the high point of European colonialism. Stanley and fellow explorers justified their presence in Africa through religion, dressing up their intervention as missionary work. Tshibumba’s painting punctures this myth; Stanley dressed in pristine white clothes strides into Katanga whilst his black Congolese carriers struggle to keep up weighed down by his cases. Far from bringing enlightenment, the villagers flee in fear at the sight of Stanley. Attaque de l’ONU depicts UN planes bombing the Gecamines mines at Lumbumbashi. Gecamines had witnessed the development of large Belgian settlements during colonial rule. When the Democratic Republic of Congo achieved independence in 1960, the election of Patrice Lumumba resulted in widespread discontent in the region. The mining region of Katanga formally seceded, causing Lumumba to appeal to the UN for assistance. Initially the UN opposed direct intervention; however, a force was deployed to quell the secessionist movement when Lumumba threatened to approach the Soviet Union. One of the last paintings in the series, Manifestation des Etudiants a Kinshasa, depicts uniformed soldiers opening fire on unarmed students on the steps of Kinshasa University. The painting reveals Mobutu’s use of military violence to suppress any form of political opposition. Bibliography S. Diop ed. 53 Echoes of Zaire: Popular Painting from Lubumbashi, DRC. Sulger-Buell Lovell Gallery & the Africa Centre exhibition catalogue (London, 2015) pp.19-71. J. Fabian, Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire. (London, 1996).
Provenance Purchased at the Piccadilly Gallery, London in 1965. Thence by direct descent to the current owners. Exhibited London, Piccadilly Gallery, Yusuf Grillo, Jimoh Akolo: two Nigerian artists as part of the Commonwealth Festival, 14 September-2 October 1965. Influenced by Futurism and Cubism, Yusuf Grillo’s portraits of Yoruba villagers have an architectural, planar quality. That Grillo and fellow Nigerian modernists looked to the works of European avant-garde artists is well documented. At the same time, Grillo was proud of his nationality and wished to establish a specifically Nigerian modernist aesthetic: “The very first thing for an artist... is to know who he or she is. You have to know where you are coming from. You have to know your roots.” The current painting was exhibited in London in 1965, at the Piccadilly Gallery on Cork Street, one of the few occasions the artist’s work was displayed in the UK. Entitled Yusuf Grillo, Jimoh Akolo: two Nigerian artists the show was held in connection with the capital’s Commonwealth Festival. Organised by Ian Hunter (M.B.E), the Commonwealth Festival was a ‘cultural jamboree’ intended to bring together and showcase art, music and dance from the entire breadth of the Commonwealth, to celebrate the diverse cultural identities of member nations. The official Nigerian contingent was a traditional Nigerian Folk opera that was performed in London, Cardiff, Glasgow and Liverpool. The Hausa population are based primarily in Western Africa, their historic centre is the city of Daura in northern most Nigeria, but they also inhabit many bordering countries. Their ‘Hausalands’ are the legendary rural towns that are found along the traditional Hajj route that traverses the Sahara Desert. However in the last century many have migrated into the rapidly developing urban centres of Lagos and Port Harcourt. Due to their positioning along Islamic pilgrimage routes, the Hausa have been engaged in international trade for hundreds of years, selling gold from the Middle East for leather, food and other household items. The subject of this work depicts such a merchant, a nomadic charm seller. The figure wears the traditional Hausa uniform of the tagelmust and jalabia/ juanni robe. Charms were thought to imbue the buyer with anything from protection to good luck. Family records show that the original owner of this painting was actively involved in Lagos’s art scene in the 1960s, visiting Grillo’s studio three times in one year. During this period, Grillo was acting as Head of Art at the Yaba College of Techology in Lagos. Bibliography I. Hunter, ‘The Commonwealth Arts Festival’ in Journal of the Royal Society of Arts, vol. 113, no. 5108 (July, 1965) pp.605-611. C. Okeke-Agulu, Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonisation in Twentieth-Century Nigeria, (Durham, 2015).
