Colours of Congo: Patterns, Symbols and Narratives in 20th-Century Congolese Paintings

A strong international interest in Congolese art, its collection and public display has grown steadily since it was first institutionalised with the foundation of Belgium’s Royal Museum of Central Africa (RMCA) in the early 1900s. In order to represent the chronological development of painting studios from Elisabethville to Brazzaville, this book is organised into three distinct sections. Following a general introduction to Congolese art since the initial colonial encounters, and Congolese painting more broadly, the first section describes the emerging workshop initiated by George Thiry. The book’s second section discusses the painting studio established by Pierre Romain-Desfossés, and the final section focuses on the schools of Laurent Moonens and Pierre Lods, highlighting the development of similar but decisively different institutions that brought European art materials to the Congo. These workshops taught established techniques and subsequently made famous in Europe some of the Congo’s better established local artists.

Florian Knothe is director of the University of Hong Kong’s University Museum and Art Gallery. He studies and teaches the history of decorative arts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with a particular focus on the social and historic importance of royal French manufacture. Estela Ibáñez-García holds degrees in art history and musicology, a higher diploma in guitar, and master’s degrees in history and aesthetics of the cinema and advanced studies in philosophy. She is currently a temporary assistant professor in the African Studies Programme of the University of Hong Kong. Thomas Bayet is currently curator of the Museum of Fine Arts in Tournai and also works with Pierre Loos on Congolese arts and paintings. He studies and publishes primary sources from the Dierickx and P. Loos Archives and has written essays for Beauté Congo (2015) and other related art catalogues.