A retrospective look at the achievements of oneof the best-known contemporary African artists. Born in 1956, Cheri Samba lives and works in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. After leaving school in 1972, he earned his living painting advertising billboards, and at the same time created comic strips for his publication Bilenge Info. In 1975, he began to put his comic strips onto canvas, thus inaugurating African painting with word bubbles. His work illustrates social life: customs, sexuality, AIDS, social inequalities, corruption. Along with the painter Moke, he is one of the principal founders of the movement in painting known as "Popular Zairean." His acrylic paintings, imbued with political awareness, are always representational, realistic, and colorful. "My painting focuses on people's lives. I'm not interested in myths or beliefs. I appeal to people's consciences. Artists must make people think." From the 1980s on, he himself became the main subject of his paintings, "so that people would not only know my name, but also my face." Distributed on behalf of the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain. 150 color photographs.

J'aime Cheri Samba

Arts & Photography

Andre Magnin

Robert. Storr

History & Criticism

Thames&Hudson

From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. The Contemporary African Art Collection-which is essentially run by only two guys, Italian collector Jean Pigozzi and French curator André Magnin-has managed to make some people very angry. Is it not the worst sort of cultural colonialism, detractors ask, for two white Westerners to define what contemporary African art is, especially when their collection consists almost exclusively of self-taught artists? But, as they make clear in the interviews included here, Pigozzi and Magnin make no claim to do anything other than present artists they love, and it is their idiosyncratic tastes that make this catalog (which is being published in conjunction with an exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston) such a surprise and a pleasure. The surprise comes from the sheer scope of inventiveness and variety on display: from the spare, ominous watercolors of Barthélémy Toguo (from Cameroon) to the surrealistic allegories Cheri Samba (of Congo) paints in a slick, commercial art style. Some of the artists produce work at a polar extreme from the scruffy, homemade look one might expect from "outsider" artists: Rigobert Nimi of Congo uses scavenged materials to build gleaming, precisely rendered models of spaceships and robot factories, and Abu Bockari Mansaray of Sierra Leone draws maniacally detailed diagrams of such devices as a "Nuclear Telephone Discovered in Hell." If there is any flaw in this presentation of an explosively imaginative group of artists (33 of them in all, from 14 countries), it is that, with only two or three images for each artist, it feels far too short. Still, for open-minded readers more interested in art itself than what Pigozzi calls "intellectual art gossip," this is a book to linger over and absorb slowly, one intoxicating vision at a time.

African Art Now: Masterpieces From the Jean Pigozzi Collection

Thomas McEvilley

Alison De Lima Greene

Alvia J. Wardlaw

Merrell

A major, lavishly illustrated study of contemporary art being produced by the leading artists working in sub-Saharan Africa. Painters, photographers, sculptors and installation artists are represented from nineteen countries: Angola, Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Republic of Mali, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Tanzania and Togo. Artists include Frédéric Bruly Bouabre, Seydou Keita, Samuel Kane Kwei, Chéri Samba and Malik Sidibé, among many others. African Art Now offers a rare glimpse into the latest currents in contemporary African art, showing how artists share an awareness of both local and global cultures, thereby acknowledging the complex heritage that African artists face today. An important and compelling book that will appeal to anyone interested in contemporary art and culture.

African Art Now: Masterpieces from the Jean Pigozzi Collection

Merrell Pub Ltd

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Books by Andre Magnin