ELIAS JENGO | WAKULIMA (THE FARMERS)

Private collection, USA

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Elias Jengo studied art and education at the famous Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda, with further studies in North America, before returning to Tanzania to take up a teaching position at the University of Dar es Salaam in 1969, the same year the current lot was painted. Jengo had studied under Sam Ntiro at Makerere and together they founded the Department of Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Dar es Salaam 1975, where he became the first head of the department and taught some of Tanzania's most famous artists.

Since the 1960s his work has featured in countless group exhibitions internationally, and his paintings and commissions can be seen in public institutions and spaces across Tanzania, including a number of famous murals on which he collaborated with Sam Ntiro. Jengo was the founding board chairman of Nafasi Art Space, and has served as Chairman of the National Arts Council, Tanzania, and as Chairman of the East Africa Art Biennale Association since its inception in 2003. He describes his works as semi-abstract, but based on his African experience and identity. He depicts the everyday in his paintings, but Jengo is also a politically-minded artist whose paintings on women's liberation and mankind's destruction of nature speak of the responsibility we have towards our society and its future.