Lot n° 29
Estimation :
5000 - 7000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 21 285EUR
MODE MUNTU (Modeste Ngoie Makulu Munty) [Mwanza, Katanga (DR - Lot 29
MODE MUNTU (Modeste Ngoie Makulu Munty) [Mwanza, Katanga (DRC) 1940 - 1985, Lubumbashi (DRC)]
Fight with the "demon serpent".
Gouache on paper. 21 x 27.5 cm.
Signed lower right, circa 1958/1959
In this early work, Mode Muntu depicts a dramatic struggle: a hybrid creature, half-serpent, half-demon, devours a figure, while women, some carrying children, attempt to slay it and free the victim. This rare composition, probably produced at the end of his studies, reveals a singular narrative intensity, in which the fight against evil becomes a universal allegory.
The work was acquired by Professor Gaucquié, a colleague of L. Moonens, both of whom taught at the Académie des Beaux-arts in Elisabethville, and passed down through the generations.
Mode Muntu ("modest man") is a singular figure in modern Congolese art.
Trained by Belgian painter Laurent Moonens at the Académie des Beaux-arts d'Élisabethville in 1954, he quickly developed a highly personal style dominated by elongated, moving, unbalanced silhouettes that express both human fragility and universal vitality. His pictorial language, enriched by monochromes, contrasts and chromatic experimentation, became his signature.
Despite his extreme shyness and modest lifestyle (he used to run a fish stall at the market), he enjoyed the support of patrons and art lovers such as Claude Charlier, Nestor Cocks, Chenge Baruti and Guy De Plaen.
In the 1980s, he flourished in a studio at the Lubumbashi museum. In January 1985, just a few days before succumbing to fulminant dysentery, he painted a premonitory work depicting a family in mourning surrounding an anonymous figure wrapped in a shroud. Mode Muntu leaves behind a timeless body of work, in which his silhouettes and chromatic research constitute a universal visual vocabulary, ensuring his place in the history of modern African and world art.
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