Painting

Object Details

Bela, born 1920, Republic of Chad

Sara artist

Label Text

This small painting is by Bela Sara, one of the members of the Lubumbashi painting atelier which was a key modernist movement in central Africa. Established by amateur artist-patron Pierre Romain-Desfossés in the late 1940s, the atelier was variously known as "Le Hangar," the "Elisabethville Indigenous Art Studio" and the Académie des beaux arts and produced a significant body of successful decorative works. Desfossés, like a number of colleagues such as Frank McEwen in Rhodesia and Pierre Lods in Brazzaville, expounded a laissez-faire approach to teaching while simultaneously providing his students with certain palettes and "native" inspirations to pursue their work.

A dynamic composition in blues, greens and ochres, the painting depicts a hunter, acompanied by two dogs, slaughtering a rabbit. The work obtains its lively manner from the application of hundreds of finger-painted dots--a technique common in Bela's paintings, which often depict a wide variety of flora and fauna scenes endowed with a great sense of color and movement.

Description

Oil on paper painting in blues, greens and ochres depicting a man holding an axe, acompanied by two dogs, and slaughtering a rabbit. Flowering or fruiting trees flank the man and animals.

Provenance

Laurance S. Rockefeller, New York, 1949 to 2002

[traveled to the Congo in 1949; then safari to East Africa May 9 -27, 1953]

Exhibition History

Recent Acquisitions and Promised Gifts, National Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., October 18, 2002-January 5, 2003

Credit Line

Anonymous gift

ca. 1940s-1950s

Object number

2002-11-1

Restrictions & Rights

Usage conditions apply

Type

Painting

Medium

Oil on paper

Dimensions

H x W: 24.5 x 29.5 cm (9 5/8 x 11 5/8 in.)

Geography

Democratic Republic of the Congo

See more items in

National Museum of African Art Collection

National Museum of African Art

Topic

dog

weapon

rabbit

tree

male

Record ID

nmafa_2002-11-1

Metadata Usage (text)

Usage conditions apply

GUID (Link to Original Record)

http://n2t.net/ark:/65665/ys75a0f0eb2-2dee-4674-99fd-e8533827bd94