ALBERT LUBAKI | UNTITLED (TWO MEN WITH COCONUT TREE)

Charles-Auguste Girard Collection, France

Thence by descent

Albert Lubaki was born in circa 1895 in Thysville, present day Mbanza-Ngungu, Democratic Republic of the Congo. The artist began his artistic career as an ivory carver, selling his figurines along the Belgian built railway track connecting the modern-day northern port city of Ilebo with Lubumbashi in South-Eastern Congo.

Lubaki was also a seasoned muralist, painting scenes of everyday life on the walls of huts, often incorporating elements reflective of the region’s colonial history. The artist began to create his signature watercolours in the mid-1920s after an encounter with a Belgian colonial official, Georges Thiry. Thiry was stationed in Bukama in 1926, where amongst his official duties was to research the local arts and craft scene. Seeking to preserve the transitory works of art he saw before him, Thiry provided Lubaki with the materials needed to begin to create works on paper, which could be preserved and exhibited. This artist-patron relationship was not uncommon; Thiry would also contribute to the careers of other artists from the same period, namely Albert Lubaki’s wife Antoinette and Djilatendo.

The production span of watercolours by Albert Lubaki was relatively short; the artist would only produce them between the mid-1920s to mid-1930s. Although Lubaki’s works by no means mark the beginning of modernist painting in the Congo, they were amongst the first modern Congolese works of art to be catapulted into the European art world. In 1929, George Thiry brought a collection of Lubaki’s works with him to Brussels to present to Gaston Denis Périer, a high level colonial official and art enthusiast. Like Thiry, Périer was dedicated to promoting and protecting these modern works of art from Central Africa and believed there to be a strong connection between these watercolours and contemporary European art of the period.

Albert Lubaki’s first European exhibition took place in Brussels in 1929 at the Palais des Beaux-Arts, where he exhibited 163 watercolours in an exhibition dedicated to self-taught European artists. This collection of work would travel to the Musée d’Ethnographie de Genève (1930) and the Galerie Charles-Auguste Girard in Paris (1931). That year, the artist would also exhibit in Rome at the first international exhibition of colonial art. Later, in 1941, Lubaki’s work returned to the Musée d’Ethnographie de Genève for his final European exhibition.

The beauty in Albert Lubaki’s work lies in its thoughtful simplicity and unexpected modernity. In this, his oeuvre recalls that of self-taught African-American artist, Bill Traylor, who began to create his own works on paper in the late 1930s in Montgomery, Alabama. Strong similarities can be seen between the two artists not only in their choice of subject matter—both artists would present pared down two-dimensional depictions of the world around them—but in their treatment of perspective and space. Both create a rhythm between their visual components through strategic placement within a defined space.

In this defined space, Lubaki depicts only what he feels is necessary. His watercolours forgo perspective and naturalism, taking inspiration from everyday life, nature, traditional rituals, and even mythology and legends. These elegant images almost always feature a watercolour border, framing the scene and highlighting the fact that these works are snapshots of Lubaki’s world. Another trademark element of Lubaki’s practice is his imaginative use of colour; the artist depicts his subjects in any shade he chooses, painting yellow elephants or blue humans alongside palm trees and other quotidian subjects.

The current lot is exemplary of this modern Congolese master’s practice. Featuring two blue figures and an animal under a coconut tree, Albert Lubaki presents a commonplace scene that is modern and elegant in its simplicity. Framed by Lubaki’s trademark border, the four subjects exist on one visual plane, exhibiting a limited sense of depth. Although the work possesses a child-like quality, or naivety, this piece by Lubaki is intensely considerate and sophisticated. Each character is purposefully placed alongside each other, providing each subject with adequate room to be appreciated independently but also harmoniously as a group.

Acceptance by the European art market proved difficult for Lubaki and his contemporaries and by the late 1930s the artist was running out of materials, forcing him to cease production. In the years that followed, Albert Lubaki disappeared from the European art scene, never fully receiving the attention that this masterful artist deserved. Albert Lubaki’s work would not be exhibited internationally until 2012, when the Fondation Cartier presented Histories de Voir, reinvigorating Lubaki’s reputation as one of the most important Congolese painters of the early twentieth century.

Bibliography:

Beauté Congo, Fondation Cartier, Paris, 2015-2016, p. 58-61 & 364-365

Gitti Salami and Monica Blackmun Visonà, A Companion to Modern African Art, 2013, p. 154-167

Josef Helfenstein, Deep Blues: Bill Traylor 1854-1949,1999, p. 26