Painting

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.

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.

Laurance S. Rockefeller, New York, 1949 to 2002

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

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

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