(Bandundu, 1950–2001 Kinshasa)
Untitled, 1994, signed and dated Peintre Moké 94, acrylic on canvas, 93.5 x 139 cm, on stretcher

Provenance:
Private Collection, Belgium

Moké was among the leading artists of the school of popular painting that developed in Kinshasa in the first decade of Zaïre’s independence. Fascinated by the progress in a spontaneous and naive way, he painted symbols of the modernization that was arriving in Africa in those years: fashionable glasses, guitars and telephones. His realistic and vivacious paintings reveal his meticulous observation of daily life in Kinshasa: street scenes, bars and local dandies, rumbas and all-night parties, public transport, ceremonials and neighborhood disputes. Because of the heat and the lively industrial colours, Moké paints almost cartoon-like characters with round and full faces, with a black line separating each of them, without concern for likeness or perspective. Unlike Chéri Samba, who would follow in his footsteps, Moké rarely depicted social conflicts, and even when he depicted African history, as is the case in the present work where he showed Mobutu telling the Belgians to return to their own country, he does it in a more humorous and light way.