Union - Sacree De
Stima (bassa/alta) :
Provenienza : [Timeline chronologique]
2013-01-01 | Purchased from Dr Klaus-Jochen Krüger in 2013
[Propriété non datée]
- A private collection, Germany
- Chéri Samba left his home village of Kinto M’Vuila in 1972 aged 16
- He travelled to Kinshasa where he was employed as a draughtsman for an advertising agency
- Billboards across the city sported works by selftaught artists such as Bodo, Mass, Cherin and Moke
- These painters greatly influenced the young Samba
- However, he soon differentiated himself by incorporating text in his work
- He later described this as the ‘Samba signature’: I had noticed that people in the street would walk by paintings, glance at them and keep going
- I thought that if I added a bit of text, people would have to stop and take time to read it, to get more into the painting and admire it
- Samba prefers to work on a large scale in vivid colours
- It is important to the artist that his works are impressive and can be easily seen from a distance
- He began to incorporate glitter in the late 1980s for this very reason
- This harks back to his training as a sign-painter, but also suggests his desire to create ‘popular’ pictures
- For Samba, art should be enjoyable for all, not only the knowledgable
- He continues to retain a studio in the city despite having become an international name
