Alexandre Pomar

Malangatana first years

Malangatana
(1958-1968 first years: Pancho Guedes, Julian Beinart, Ulli Beier, from L.M. to Ibadan, London, Bombay)

(tradução a rever)

Malangatana (1936-2011) had a studio at his disposal at Pancho Guedes’ house since January 1960 and it was Pancho who organized with the Núcleo de Arte (an artists association founded in 1936) his first individual show of paintings, in April 1961, on the very official headquarters of the “Economic Entities” (Actividades Económicas) inaugurated in the presence of military and civil authorities.

Inauguration April 1961 (Photo archive Guedes)

On 1961 also, the Ibadan flyer (Ulli Beier, 1961) mentions a collective exhibition at Cape Town, organized by students (certainly via Julian Beinart) at the local university, including Susanne Wenger — “but apart from that his work has not been seen outside Lourenço Marques.” Furthermore, the upcoming publication of an article on Malangatana by Julian Beinart in Black Orpheus magazine is mentioned (issue nº 10, 1962, which also includes two poems translated by Dorothy Guedes).

Pancho wrote in the catalogue (April 1961), as A. d’Alpoim Guedes:

“The complete painter

These paintings are the result of little more than a year and a half’s work by an ex-waiter.
Malangatana is a natural and complete painter. With him, composition and the harmony of colour is not an intellectual game; they occur to him as naturally as stories and visions do.
He knows without knowing.
His vision has odd parallels with the European tradition. Certain paintings are close to the primitive Catalonians; some are like the macabre apparitions of the Dutch visionaries, while others suggest an involuntary, direct and magical surrealism.
He seems to come from that tradition without ever having had access to it or any form of training.
He is visited by spirits; certain paintings are hallucinations, fragments of a hell that once belonged to Bosch.
Malangatana has a thorough understanding of man’s subterraneous reasons, which, combined with his extraordinary formal vision, produces painting of such a rare totality that, despite being a beginner, he is already one of Africa’s major painters. “ (translated from the Portuguese)

In the 1961 flyer Ulli Beier introduces the beginning of Malagatana’s painting, patronized by Guedes, as follows:

“(...) his artistic potentialities were recognised by Amâncio Guedes, the brilliant architect, who met Malangatana when he was working as ball boy in the Lourenço Marques club. Through the friendship with Guedes, Malangatana blossomed forth as a painter. It is not so much that he was taught things in a conventional sense. But for the first time in his life Malangatana found that his work was taken seriously. He had an audience and encouragement. He lived in surrounding where art mattered and was practiced. More over there was an affinity of spirits. Guedes – when he is not designing buildings -– is a surrealist painter. Malangatana’s work does not show the slightest influence of Guedes work – nor of anybody else’s work. But seeing it may have confirmed Malangatana in his aspirations.”

Malangatana by Ulli Beier, 1962, with a self-portrait (flyer/invitation - photo Archive Guedes)

In fact, Malangatana was already attending the Núcleo de Arte, since 1958, as an occasional student with João Ayres (a modern master), protected by Augusto Cabral and José Júlio, when, at the end of 1959, Pancho Guedes visited him with Frank McEwen and offered to buy a painting a month from him. A while later he invited Malangatana to occupy a studio in his house at Nevala Street (The Smiling Lion), making him get out from under the influence of the Núcleo artists.

To this version of the story, often told by the painter, Pancho adds an earlier episode:

“And then Malangatana came, adopting a kind of ironic, humorous attitude. Feigning that he was a bit mad (within accepted limits) permitted him to behave in an extraordinary manner towards white people. He came into the office and asked me to design a house for him, speaking in a quite distorted but flowery Portuguese. Then he said that he was going to become a painter and that I should come to look at his work.” (U.B.’s interview, 2009. See also Pancho Guedes, 1998)

Inauguration 2009, Malangatana at Pancho Guedes retrospective show, Lisbon . With portrait of Dorothy Guedes and the Saipal Bakery (Photo A.P.)

The two men will be friends until the end: it was Malangatana who spoke (and sang and danced) at the opening of Guedes’s big retrospective show in Lisbon (2009) – and it would not be wrong to see Malangatana and Tito Zungo, a outsider artist from South Africa, to some extent, as Pancho’s alter-egos.

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As soon as 1962 (June) Malangatana has a solo exhibition at the Mbari Ibadan (“Exhibition of Paintings by Malangatana”), repeated at the gallery at the Mbari Mbayo club, which opened in Oshogbo in the first half of 1962 (U.B. remembers it in the aforementioned interview, 2009).

Beier writes in the flyer/invitation (“Valente Malangatana”, signed U.B.), but the text (like the 1961 notes) is not referenced in the extensive bibliography published under the title The Hunter Thinks the Monkey Is not NOT Wise, a Bibliography of Writings by Ulli Beier (Obotunde Ijimere & Co).

Catalogue, with a drawing by Ibrahim el-Salahi, 1963

Malangatana’s paintings then travel to London to be shown at Roland Penrose’s Institute for Contemporary Art, along with works by Ibrahim El-Salahi (b. 1930, Sudan). The 4-page catalogue of “2 Painters from Africa. Salahi & Malangatana. ICA. Dover St.” includes a poem by Malangatana and autobiographical extracts from both painters, out of Black Orpheus nº 10. Malangatana’s work had been shown in Salisbury, at the International Congress of African Culture (ICAC’62), a show Penrose attended, but not El-Salahi’s work.

This groundbreaking London show is not mentioned in the catalogue of El-Salahi’s retrospective at the Tate Modern in 2013, precisely 50 years later, although it made for an absolutely revealing juxtaposition of the questions which where then posed to the new African art of the 1960’s – to “Neo-African art” (a designation proposed by Janheinz Jahn, in 1958), or to the “renaissance of African art” or “modern art in Africa”, as Beier writes in the preface and conclusion of his 1968 book: “Nor does it matter how we label them” (Contemporary Art in Africa, p. 169).

In his seminal book of 1960, Art in Nigeria, Beier said that those that are called  then “modern african artists were European trained and were merely copying Europe”. But “the African new art forms have been evolved independently of European teaching and influence” (p. 4, Introduction). He writes:

“Art teaching suffers from the same failing from witch the whole of Nigerian education suffers: it is foreign-orientated. If independence means anything at all, it will mean the Nigerianisation of education” (p. 24 Conclusion).

Malangatana came from the “jungle” and Pancho Guedes’s studio; he was an attentive and supported self-taught artist. El-Salahi had graduated from Slade School and was a scholarly painter, although he had already altered the “modern style” he learned in London, as a consequence of an unsuccessful return to Sudan and the contact with Ulli Beier’s Mbari Club, reacquainting himself with local influences, in search of a possible synthesis.
In a recent interview published in The Guardian, El-Salahi recalls a visit to Nigeria in 1961, when he “met the writers Chinua Achebe and Soyinka Wolke, and became aware of a renaissance under way across the continent, with writers and artists in areas from all over taking from traditional art to create new forms for a new era” (naming Uche Okeke, Demas Nwoko and Malangatana).
“It was Africa's great modernist moment, and Salahi’s work fitted the bill”, Mark Hudson writes in “Ibrahim el-Salahi: from Sudanese prison to Tate Modern show”, The Guardian). However, “modernism” is an ambiguous word, which should be scrutinized and avoided – is not the same as modern art (as African modern art or Modern art in Africa).

The approach chosen by the commissioner, Salah M. Hassan (Tate Modern), was to integrate El-Salahi in a generic ”modernist movement in African visual arts", aimed at “interrogating and repositioning African modernism in the context of modernity as a universal idea” – and in a near nominal reference includes Malangatana among the pioneer African modernists (p. 11). This is about the existence and valuing of a mainstream international modernism that African modernism would fit into, especially when it is based on academic training, and when “in form, style, and aesthetic sensibility, their art reflects the strict adherence to the Western academic schooling they receive in Europe” (p. 14) But this kind of analyzes that claim to be post-colonial and anti-ethnocentric ignore the tensions and ruptures that exist in the dominant panorama of institutionalized modernism of the Cold War’s 50’s (ignoring the Cobra artists and Dubuffet, in particular) .

In the same catalogue, the Chika Okeke-Agulu’s text identifies in right terms, I think, the Beir’s complex attitude between the promotion of artists trained in workshops and the interested approval of those formally trained as contemporary artists - but he doesn’t talk about Malangatana.

Later, 1963 and 64, with the addition of Uche Okeke (Nigeria), there are three painters in an exhibition that travels to India and Pakistan, organized by the Committee for Cultural Freedom. A small 8-page catalogue with a text by Ulli Beier is referenced at worldcat.org: “Exhibition of African Art: Salahi * Malangatana * Okeke”, Exhibition held at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay 1964. Ulli Beier always mentions the Committee and the Congress’ grants for the publication of Black Orpheus and the activity of the Mbari Club; the exiled South African writer Ezekiel Mphahlele represented it in Nigeria in the 60s. In 1967 that support would be terminated for relying on funding from the CIA.

Ulli Beier’s 1968 book Contemporary art in Africa features Malangatana at length, and Chapter 4, “Finding the short cut”, is almost completely devoted to him (pp. 62-72):

“Malangatana may have been the first African artist to find the short cut – to become a sophisticated artist while bypassing education.” (p. 72).

On El-Salahi he writes (Chapter 2: “Without a tradition...”):

“No artist could create a more perfect synthesis of the cultural elements that make up the modern Sudan, the Islamic tradition and the wider all-African orientation of today. Yet Salahi is not a self-consciously ‘African’ artist, he is no preacher of Négritude, he is no preacher of anything; he is a dreamer”. (pp. 30-31)

Malangatana does not travel in those years, even though that has been printed. At the end of 1964 he is imprisoned (for 18 months), accused of being a member of Frelimo, but it should be noted that in the same year he won the first prize at the Lourenço Marques City Exhibition and that he painted mural panels for the headquarters of the very official Banco Nacional Ultramarino.
Only in 1971 will he receive a grant from the Gulbenkian Foundation to come to Lisbon to study ceramics and printmaking (he holds his first exhibition in Lisbon in 1972), travelling through Europe then.



Bibliography
Ulli Beier, 1960, Art in Nigeria 1960, Cambridge, at the Universitary Press, in collaboration with the Information Division, Ministry of Home Affairs, Ibadan, Nigeria. (24 pages + 77 plates)

Pancho Guedes (A. d’Alpoim Guedes), 1961, “O pintor completo” (The complete painter). In catalogue “Malangatanha Goenha Valente”, Lourenço Marques, Exposição organizada pelo Núcleo de Arte”. April. (Archive Guedes - photo)

Ulli Beier (unsigned), 1961, “Seen in South Africa”. In Flyer/invitation published by the Department of Extra Mural Studies, at the “Opening of an Exhibition of Photographs documenting Art and Architecture in Mozambique and the Union of South Africa”, at the Mbari, Ibadan (September 22nd to 7th October). (Archive Guedes - photo)

Julian Beinart,1962, “Malangatana”, Black Orpheus, issue nº. 10 ( includes two poems translated by Dorothy Guedes)

Ulli Beier (U.B.), 1962, “Valente Malangatana”. In 4-pages Flyer/invitation “Exhibition of Paintings by Malangatana”, June 25t, Mbari Ibadan. (2 photos) (Archive Guedes - photo)

National Gallery Salisbury, 1962, Exhibions to be held on the occasion of the First International Congress of African Culture, August 1 - September 30. Catalogue.

Institute for Contemporary Art, 1963, “2 Painters from Africa. Salahi & Malangatana. ICA. Dover St.”. 4-page catalogue, Ibrahim El-Salahi  and Malangatana (poem and autobiographical extract).

Ulli Beyer 1964, “Exhibition of African Art: Salahi * Malangatana * Okeke”, Exhibition held at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Bombay, February 24-29. Catalogue. ( http://www.worldcat.org/title/exhibition-of-african-art-salahi-okeke-malangatana/oclc/40393513&referer=brief_results ) (unknown)

Ulli Beier, 1968, Contemporary Art in Africa, Pall Mall Press London.

Ulli Beier, 1996 (1975), The Hunter Thinks the Monkey Is not NOT Wise, a Bibliography of Writings by Ulli Beier, Ed. Obotunde Ijimere & Co. Third edition. ( http://www.thorolf-lipp.de/publications/documents/TheHunterthinksthemonkeyisnotwise.pdf )

Pancho Guedes (Amâncio d’Alpoim Guedes), 1998, “Lembrança do pintor Malangatana Valente Ngwenya quando ainda joven”, in Júlio Navarro org., Malangatana, Lisboa, Caminho (exists English edition).

Ulli Beier (and Pancho Guedes), 2009, “Interview, Joannesburg, September 19th 1980, in Pancho Guedes, Vitruvius Mozambicanos, Ed. Pedro Guedes, Museu Colecção Berardo, Lisbon. Catalogue.

Graça Gonçalves Pereira (org.), 1912, Malangatana, Painéis e Murais, ed. Consulado Geral de Portugal, Maputo. Catalogue.

Salah M. Hassan, 2013, “Ibrahim El-Salahi and the Making of African and Transnational Modernism”, in Ibrahim El-Salahi A visionary Modernist, Edited by Salah M. Hassan, Tate Publishing in association with the Museum for African Art. Tate Modern, London (July- September). Catalogue.

Chika Okeke-Agulu, 2013, “Ibrahim El-Salahi and Postcolonial Modernism in the Independence Decade”, idem.

Mark Hudson, 2013, “Ibrahim el-Salahi: from Sudanese prison to Tate Modern show”, The Guardian, July 3rd.  ( http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/jul/03/ibrahim-el-salahi-tate-modern )

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“Suddenly I understood what colonialism meant: arrogance based on ignorance, sniggering condescension towards people one had come to 'help', an arrogance which reduced whole cultures to the level of curios.” Ulli Beier

Programa Iwalewa-Haus

Programa para desenvolver e actualizar, de regresso a Lourenço Marques

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1ª pág. do artigo publicado na revista "Black Orpheus", Ibadan, Nigéria, Nº 10, 1962 (grafismo de Susanne Wenger). Capa do catálogo do ICA, Londres, 1963

Ulli Beier, Frank McEwen, Amâncio (Pancho) Guedes e Julian Beinart: uma rede africana informal de mediadores e patronos ao tempo das independências dos anos 50/60

No início dos anos 1960, Lourenço Marques (hoje Maputo) era um dos pólos a Sul de uma África em mudança, apesar do regime colonial, que então buscava caminhos reformistas (Eduardo Mondlane foi convidado a instalar-se em LM no início de 1961, e fundou a FRELIMO em ‘62). Ao tempo da “euforia dos 60” que se vivia em geral no continente, a possibilidade de uma cultura africana e moderna, na área cultural anglófona e lusófona, procurava-se em LM graças ao dinamismo do arquitecto Amâncio (Pancho) d'Alpoim Guedes e à afirmação fulgurante do pintor Malangatana, apoiados pela actividade itinerante de Julian Beinart, jovem arquitecto de Cape Town (depois de 1974 Professor de Arquitectura, no Massachusetts Institute of Technology).
O optimisto interrompe-se a partir de 1964, com o início da guerra de libertação em Moçambique, com a declaração unilateral de independência da Rodésia (65) e a Guerra do Biafra (66). O intenso trânsito cultural caíu depois no esquecimento, agravado pela reduzida circulação da informação em língua portuguesa.
A ligação de Pancho Guedes com Ulli Beier, em Ibadan, e com Frank McEwen, em Salisbúria ( Rodésia do Sul/Zimbabwe), ilustra-se por uma muito rápida sequência de factos. A escola de verão (summerschool) em LM, de Janeiro de 1961, dá origem a um segundo worshop em Ibadan, já orientado por Beinart e Guedes, a que se seguem mais quatro em diferentes locais, animados por Beinart. Malangatana, que expôs em 1961 em LM, é apresentado por Beinart na revista “Black Orpheus” em 1962 e exposto em Ibadan e Oshogo no mesmo ano, e logo em 1963 no ICA de Londres, com Ibrahim el-Salahi. (Beinart escrevera sobre Guedes na “Architectural Revue”, de Londres (Abril 1961).)
Entretanto, Pancho Guedes é um interveniente destacado no 1º Congresso Internacional de Cultura Africana, promovido  por McEwen na então Rhodes National Gallery (agora National Gallery of Zimbabwe) (Agosto 1962), cujas actas são muito pouco conhecidas. É apresentado por Tristan Tzara, mostra a sua obra de arquitecto e expõe Malangatana com outros artistas de Moçambique. Beinart em “Visual Education for Emerging Cultures: The African Opportunity” (in Gyorgy Kepes, The Education of Vision, NY 1965), e Ulli Beir em Contemporary Art in Africa (1968, com edição alemã em 1967) deixaram alguma memória desses episódios e do exemplo original de Malangatana.

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1ªs páginas das Actas do 1º ICAC (não editadas)

ICAC - Exhibitions to be held on the occasion of the First International Congress of African Culture. National Gallery Salisbury, August 1 - September 30, 1962. 335 lots (+ Photographs 50 ns), photos in b&w. (from Pella Books, Pella IA, USA - recebido a 13-3-2013)

Catálogo (...) Mocambique: Muchanga, Abdias Julio nºs 303-307 (rep. The Emigrants) / Nafetale, Augusto nºs 308-312 / Mati, Alberto nºs 313-317 / Valente, Malangatana Goenha nºs 318-323 (rep. Song of songs with Jonas)/ Macie, Metine nºs 324-327

 

Ulli Beier, Frank McEwen, Pancho Guedes  and Julian Beinart: an informal african network of mediators, patrons and benefactors during the 1950s-1960s.

In the early 1960s, Lourenço Marques (currently Maputo) was one of the focal points in the South of a changing Africa, despite the colonial regime, in search for reformist paths. (E. Mondlane was invited to settle in L.M. in 1961, and founded FRELIMO in ‘62).
During the “60s euphoria”, experienced throughout the continent, a quest for the possibility of a modern African culture within the English and Portuguese speaking cultural world took place in L.M., due to the drive of architect Amâncio (Pancho) d’Alpoim Guedes and the meteoric affirmation of painter Malangatana, both supported by the itinerant activity of Julian Beinart, a young architect from Cape Town (Professor at the MIT, after 1974).
The optimism was halted in 1964, with the start of the Liberation War in Mozambique, the unilateral declaration of independence of Rhodesia (‘65) and the Biafran War (‘66). This intense cultural interchange fell into oblivion, and was further hurt by the reduced circulation of information in Portuguese language.
The connection between Guedes and Ulli Beier, in Ibadan, and with Frank McEwen, in Salisbury (Southern Rhodesia; now Harare/Zimbabwe) is illustrated by a rapid sequence of events. The summer school in L.M., in January 1961, originated a second workshop in Ibadan, already led by Beinart and Guedes, that was followed by four more, in different locations, led by Beinart alone. Malangatana, who had a first exhibition in ’61, was presented by Beinart in “Black Orpheus” magazine, in ‘62. He exhibited his work in Ibadan in the same year, and in London’s ICA, in ‘63, alongside Ibrahim el-Salahi. (Beinart had written an article on Guedes in London’s “Architectural Review”, in April 1961.)
Meanwhile, Pancho Guedes was a prominent figure in the 1st International Congress of African Culture, organized by McEwen at the Rhodes National Gallery  (today the National Gallery of Zimbabwe) in August 1962, which Proceedings very few might know. He was introduced by Tristan Tzara, and presented his architectural work, as well a exhibition of Malangatana alongside other artists from Mozambique.
Some testimony of these events and of the originality of Malangatana (“the short cut”) was left by Beinart, in “Visual Education for Emerging Cultures: The African Opportunity” (in Gyorgy Kepes, The Education of Vision, NY 1965), and by Ulli Beir, in Contemporary Art in Africa (1967).

cf

Thomas J. Watson Library
The Catalog of the Libraries of The Metropolitan Museum of Art:
(event) International Congress of African Culture (1st 1962 Harare Zimbabwe)
(Title) Festival of African and neo-African art and music: and influences on the western world: congress, exhibitions, music festival / First Biennial International Congress of African Culture, Rhodes National Gallery, August-September 1961 [i.e. 1962], Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia
[23] p. : ill. ; 26 cm
Prospectus for the Congress
English and French

Ulli Beier on conversations

 

WEIGHING THE COST OF PIN-MAKING
Ulli Beier in Conversations

Edited with an Introduction by Remi Omodele

from Africa World Press Books

Weighing the Cost of Pin-making: Ulli Beier in Conversations is a compilation of Ulli Beier’s interviews with Rowland Abiodun, Chinua Achebe, Ibrahim El Salahi, Richard Olaniyan, Sophie Oluwole, Biodun Jeyifo and the 1986 Nobel Laureate, Wole Soyinka.  Included are two interviews Beier granted to Olu Obafemi and Femi Bodunrin respectively, and prefaces by two award-winning authors, Lucia Birnbaum and Niyi Osundare.

Ed. Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey, 2012, 300 p. (24,70 €, by The Book Depository)

Conducted in a chatty style, these interviews evoke that quintessential Yoruba characterization of a jamboree of geniuses: Iwo le jo, emi le lu… (an accomplished dancer encounters a master drummer...). How fortunate indeed that Beier succeeds in documenting the thoughts of some of the world’s brightest minds not only on the issues pertaining to Africa, but, perhaps most importantly, the whole world—and Africa’s place in it!  

Conversations covers a gamut of subjects which—even when personal—shed profound light on Africa’s past and future. The question of identity looms, and Soyinka and Salahi (“Identity”) tackle it forcefully. Salahi shares personal experiences as an artist and a practicing Muslim in and out of Africa, and his stories resonate. The average African can relate to encounters with prospective landlords or employers for whom identity invariably poses a dilemma. What is remarkable is how the speakers in this volume constantly find that they can rely on traditional African ideals to navigate life’s treacherous waters or to bridge egregious gaps. Thus Soyinka (“Orisa Liberates the Mind”) is unequivocal in his belief that the humane tendencies enshrined in Africa’s ancient religious traditions—though maligned by colonizing agents and jettisoned by many today—possess the key to a dignifying and rational life. Jeyifo’s “Desperate Optimism” shows how wherever the traditional tendencies are still embraced, we can glean the hospitality and integrity described glowingly indeed by erstwhile Arab and Western visitors to the so-called Dark Continent.

Some of the character-building mechanisms responsible for the aforementioned solid humanity are described by Abiodun (“Yoruba Values”, “Yoruba Women”) and Oluwole (“The Making of a Philosopher”). These pieces showcase, inter alia, how placing the child at the center of communal life makes parenting joyful and advantageous to all involved; how sharing lightens the enormous task of caring for the child and the elderly; how in this environment the child thrives, and a cycle of sustainable life builds.

In “Iconography of Order and Disorder”, “Process of Rediscovery”, and “Reflections”, Beier and his guests delineate the prevalence and benefits of two vital elements of traditional life: the immeasurable power of women and the place of broadmindedness and wisdom. The women’s leadership acumen constantly impresses Beier while the Olorisa’s open-mindedness leads him to conclude categorically that whereas “…Christian sects fight each other [and] antagonism between Muslims and Christians is on the rise, [Africans] enjoyed ecumenical ideas long before anybody had coined [the] word...” Achebe (“The World is a Dancing Masquerade”) provides an aptly corroborating metaphor for the versatility Beier describes.

Were it possible to distill this volume’s essence, it would be its focus on wisdom as an agent of equilibrium and social harmony—two elusive commodities in today’s world of growing intolerance and tension. As an antidote, Beier recommends “the tolerance of Yoruba religion, its understanding of human weakness, its way of creating harmony, and its respect for the individual. Above all, [Beier puts]…across to any new generation—whether in Asia or Europe—the notion that we become good members of a community, not by obeying a set of abstract laws, but by fulfilling our own potential and developing … [our] talents…”

ABOUT THE EDITOR
REMI OMODELE studied Theater Arts at Ibadan, Lund and UCLA. She has taught and directed plays at Calabar, Osaka Gaidai and U.C. Berkeley where she enjoys occasional stints as Visiting Associate Professor. Some of her essays on Theater Arts have appeared in African Studies Review, Ufahamu, UCLA, The Osaka University of Foreign Studies Journal, Women’s History Review, Routledge Press and Themes in Drama, Cambridge University Press.

CATEGORY
Literature, Drama, Anthropology/AFRICA

http://www.africaworldpressbooks.com/servlet/Detail?no=910

Livros velhos (novos): Africa 1995

Seven stories about modern art in Africa: an exhibition / organized by the Whitechapel Art Gallery; concept and general edition, Clémentine Deliss. Ed. Paris; New York: Flammarion, 1995. 319pp. :  Catalog of the international exhibition held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Malmo Konsthall, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (Soho), New York, Sept. 27, 1995­ - Sept. 1996. Includes bibliographical references. (pp. 290­-318). (in http://www.sil.si.edu/SILPublications/ModernAfricanArt/maadetail.cfm?subCategory=1990s ) via The Book Depository 14,40€

As sete histórias passam-se na Nigéria (Chika Okeke), no Senegal (El Hadji Sy), Sudão e Etiópia (Salah M. Hassan), África do Sul (David Koloane) e Kenia e Ugana (Wanjiku Nyachae). Os narradores são africanos. Os textos gerais são de Clémentine Deliss e Everlyn Nicodemus (Third Text).

São acompanhadas por recolhas (Recollections) de entrevistas, depoimentos memorialistas, manifestos de cada uma das áreas em questão. E por índices e cronologias sobre escolas, workshops, movimentos, exposições e bibliografia.

A entrada sobre Seven Stories no "Sampler" de Africa Remix (Thomas Boutoux e Cédric Vincent) parece-me a mais correcta apresentação do catálogo, que teve à data críticas pouco favoráveis (os artistas expostos não eram os habitualmente cooptados).

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Os capítulos sobre a Nigéria alargam a informação disponível sobre a Zaria art Society de Uche Okeke e Demas Nwoko, a "Síntese Natural", o Mbari Club de Ibadan (Julho 1961 - 1971) e "The Oshogbo Experiment", associando Ulli Beier, Susanne Wnger e Georgina Beier...

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depois de

"Africa explores. 20th century african art" Exhibition catalogue by Susan Vogel, with contributions by Walter E. A. van Beek, Bogumil Jewsiewicki,  Ima Ebong, Donald John Cosentino, Thomas McEvilley, and V. Y. Mudimbe. 
Published and distributed by The Center for African Art and Prestel, Munich, February 1991. 300 pp. 
http://www.africanart.org/index.php

Beier e Moçambique, 1962

Revisto, 1 Maio

Depois de uma primeira apresentação da pintura de Malangatana no Mbari Club de Ibadan, em Setembro de 1961, através de fotografias, Ulli Beier expõe os seus quadros em Junho de 1962,

acompanhados por um texto de convite e apresentação que ele próprio assina. Beier refere que é a primeira mostra individual fora de Lourenço Marques e que a revista "Black Orpheus", de que é um dos directores, já publicara no seu nº 10, de 1962, uma "brilhante análise" da obra de Malangatana da autoria de Julian Beinart.

A imagem é um pormenor do quadro "Feitiço" reproduzido em Contemporary Art in Africa, de Ulli Beier, 1968: "Witchcraft (Lourenço Marques). Oil. Scene with self-portrait.", pág. 71.Um auto-retrato, portanto.

O texto (tal como as notas do convite de 1961) não é referenciado na extensa bibliografia de U.B. publicada sob o título THE HUNTER THINKS THE MONKEY IS NOT WISE , A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WRITINGS BY ULLI BEIER, OBOTUNDE IJIMERE & CO.

A mostra repetiu-se na galeria do clube Mbari Mbayo, que abrira em Oshogbo na 1ª metade de 1962 (é o que U.B. refere na entrevista com Pancho Guedes, já antes transcrita - ver entrada sobre 1961), e certamente o texto publicou-se de novo. Malangatana não se deslocou à Nigéria, ao contrário do que é por vezes referido (por exemplo, cat. Africa Remix, pág. 273). E por outro lado a exposição não é referida na Biografia incluida no catálogo de Malangatana, SEC/SNBA 1989, embora o texto de Beier aí seja parcialmente transcrito (in Excertos de textos sobre M., pág. 142), tal como sucede no livro Malangatana, org. Júlio Navarro, 1998.

Ulli Beier e Moçambique, 1961

Ulli Beier (1922-2011, recentemente falecido em Sidney, Austrália) - o professor alemão da Universidade de Ibadan, na Nigéria dos anos 1950 e 60, autor de vários livros sobre a cultura Yoruba e a literatura e arte modernas africanas, um dos fundadores do Mbari Club e da revista "Black Orpheus", mais tarde também activo na Papua Nova Guiné...  - desempenhou um papel essencial na apresentação e na muito rápida internacionalização da obra de Malangatana (*N1).

Pouco depois da primeira mostra individual de Malangatana em Lourenço Marques - Maputo (inauguração a 10 Abril de 1961; organizada com o apoio de Pancho Guedes, que assinou o texto do catálogo, "O pintor completo", como A. d'Alpoim Guedes), Ulli Beier mostrou a sua pintura  - através de fotografias -  numa das primeiras exposições do Mbari Club, em Ibadan (*N2), de 23 Setembro até 7 Outubro de 1961. Expôs também e em simultâneo a arquitectura de Amâncio Guedes.

"SEEN IN SOUTH AFRICA" (título da mostra) contou com a edição de uma folha/convite onde se anuncia como uma iniciativa do Departamento de Extra Mural Studies da Universidade de Ibadan :
an Exhibition of Photographs documenting
Art and Architecture in Mozambique and the Union of South Africa.

"Recentemente, Ulli Beier viajou para a África do Sul e Moçambique com uma bolsa Rockefeller para estudar novos desenvolvimentos em Arte e Literatura. Esta exposição apresenta algumas das coisas que viu:"

Seguem-se 4 breves notas sobre VALENTE MALANGATANA, AMANCIO GUEDES, as CASAS NDEBELE (Transval) e a WEST NATIVE TOWNSHIP

(actualizado a 30 Abril)

O livro do dia: Ulli Beier, 2004

Cloth Only Wears to Shreds: Textiles and Photographs from the Ulli Beier Collection, by Rowland O. Abiodun, Ulli Beier, John Pemberton III
ed. Mead Art Museum, Amherst, Massachusetts (from New Orleans, via Biblio.com)

Rowland O. Abiodun, Ulli Beier, John Pemberton III (textos)
...
"Tribute to Ulli Beier" (a obra, registo biográfico), pp. 11-14.
...
"An Afterword", Ulli Beier, pp. 59-77 (The crisis of the Yoruba culture; On being a reluctant photographer; Paralle thruths: about Yoruba tolerance; Children in Yoruba society)
...
Bibliography. Selected works by Ulli Beier (1954-2002)

Berliner Festwochen © 1964

 ( while she looks towards the camera, he – in an elaborately-embroidered etu [one of Yoruba’s three classic textiles] – looks straight ahead.  Taken at the Berlin Theatre Festival in 1964 where Late Duro Ladipo’s Oba Koso was performed ) **

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algumas outras capas:

THE PENGUIN BOOK OF MODERN AFRICAN POETRY - THIRD EDITION, Moore, Gerald and Ulli Beier (edited by) Penguin Books, 1984 (?). [Augustinho Neto, Antonio Jacinto, Costa Andrade, Ngudia Wendel, Jofre Rocha, Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, Onesima Silveira, Wole Soyinka, Christopiher Okigbo, Gabriel Okara, John Pepper Clark, Aig Higo, et al]

from the Penguin African Library series, 1963 (?)

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966 1st ed - African poetry from Sotho, Ewe, Yoruba, Swahili, Ibo, Galla and Egyptian and more. illustrated with 10 silkscreens by Susanne Wenger. Introduction by Beier

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outra foto:

Late Ulli Beier and Late Ataoja of Osogbo Oba S.A. Adenle I, admiring an aluminum panel by Asiru Olatunde, donated to 
His Highness by Professor Beier in the early l960′s at Ataoja’s Palace, Osogbo.

(a picture sent by Professor Beier after reading a book, OBA S.A. ADENLE, Portrait of a Yoruba Oba, written by Dr. Depo Adenle and Tola Adenle) ** http://emotan.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/ulli-beier-artists-patron-of-the-artists-teacher-passes-away-far-from-home/

África, anos 50/60

“Havia muitas pessoas a pairar à volta” ( 1)

Frank McEwen, Ulli Beier, Julian Beinart e Amâncio Guedes: uma rede africana ao tempo das independências dos anos 50/60
 

“1950/60 - Amâncio Guedes, arquitecto português residente em Maputo, Moçambique, organiza  workshops informais para jovens artistas. Entre os participantes está Malangatana Ngwenya (n. 1936), cujas pinturas são mais tarde expostas pelo Mbari Clube de Artistas e Escritores em Ibadan, Nigéria". A informação é da Heildbrunn Timeline of Art History, residente no site do Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nova Iorque, capítulo “Southern Africa, 1900 a.d. – present”, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/?period=11&region=afo#/Key-Events).

Há adiante outra referência a Malangatana, aliás pouco certeira, mas este é o único acontecimento com relevância artística ocorrido na África dita portuguesa aí citado. Angola e Moçambique figuram depois na "timeline" (a linha do tempo, nome bem mais sugestivo que cronologia) com as datas de início das lutas armadas (1961 e 1963, respectivamente - devia ser 1964) e muito mais tarde, só em 1975, com as independências. É um vazio informativo que os distingue drasticamente das áreas vizinhas, mas, se houve realmente falta de acontecimentos, há também insuficiência de conhecimentos. A referência a Amâncio Guedes deixa perceber uma memória imprecisa dos factos, desde logo pela datação pouco acertada, que a faz preceder os outros eventos marcantes da década de 50, como, por exemplo, logo a seguir, a fundação da revista Drum em 1951 na África do Sul ou o início da acção de Frank McEwen em Salisbúria, em 1954.

timeline (Metropolitan Museum, NY)

África do Sul, Moçambique, Rodésia do Sul Nigéria, pela "timeline" do Metropolitan, a propósito de "As Áfricas de Pancho Guedes":

- a referência ao movimento CoBrA (1948) é um ponto de partida a ter em conta; Dubuffet e a Arte Brut (Raw Art, Outsider Art, designações próximas, for art produced by non-professionals working outside aesthetic norms) são contemporâneos (1949: Jean Dubuffet précise sa définition de l’Art Brut dans « L’Art Brut préféré aux arts culturels ». Ce texte, qui a valeur de manifeste, figure dans le catalogue accompagnant la première exposition d’ensemble de La Compagnie de l’Art Brut, à la galerie René Drouin, à Paris.) entre a ideia de "low art" e a procura dos "primitivos".

- o workshop de Amâncio/Pancho Guedes é de Janeiro de 1961 (1); em Abril a Architectural Review, em Londres, dedica a capa à obra de arquitecto (2), que expõe na Bienal de São Paulo como representante de Moçambique (3); no mesmo ano ocorre a 1ª exp. individual de Malangatana em Lourenço Marques (4). Em 1962, a revista Black Orpheus (Ibadan, Nigéria) dedica-lhe um longo artigo (5), e é exposto no Mbari Club (6).

- Frank McEwen em Salisbury (Rodésia do Sul), organizador do Congresso de 1962; Ulli Beier, fundador do Mbari Club na Nigéria (7), e Julian Beinart, autor dos artigos sobre Pancho Guedes e Malangatana antes citados, co-animador dos workshops de Lourenço Marques, Ibadan, etc, são as figuras decisivas de uma rede de promotores ou patronos activos no início dos anos 60.

A cronologia africana do Met (Heilbrunn timeline of art history): Amâncio Guedes, Malangatana, Frank McEwen, Ulli Beier...

+

 Metropolitan Museum Timeline

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(1), Malangatana no workshop de Janeiro de 1961

(2) Architectural Review, capa com pormenor do Hotel para São Martinho do Bilene, não construído (1963)

(3) Bienal de São Paulo, 1961, com o Leão que Ri em 1º plano

(4) 1ª individual

(5) Malangatana pintor e poeta (1962, reimpressão de 1983)

(6) convite com texto de Ulli Beier

(Uche Okeke, Ibrahim El-Salahi, Twins Seven Seven, Vincent Kofi e Malangatana são os artistas com maior destaque à época - e o norte-americano Jacob Lawrence, de visita à Nigéria).

É Tristan Tzara quem apresenta a comunicação de Amâncio/Pancho Guedes no Congresso de Salisbúria; visita em seguida Lourenço Marques/Maputo.

 

(consultas) Passagem pela Nigéria, 1960

Uma boa surpresa é encontrar na Biblioteca da Gulbenkian o pequeno livro de Ulli Beier intitulado "Art in Nigeria 1960":

Um livro pioneiro e ainda oportuno, insubstituível, publicado pela Cambridge University Press, com 24 páginas de texto e muitas ilustrações. Foi o ano da independência da Nigéria (entre 17 países africanos) e parece ter sido Ulli Beier quem organizou a respectiva exp. comemorativa.

Em 1968, depois de ter deixado a Nigéria após o 1º golpe de estado, publicou o livro CONTEMPORARY ART IN AFRICA, ed. Pall Mall Press, London, que continua a ser uma obra sem paralelo pelos critérios de proximidade pragmática ou de declarada cumplicidade crítica com que percorre o seu tema e se relaciona com as obras e os artistas. (E esse a Biblioteca não possui...)

2001 Enwezor x 2 (notas)

1 . Short century: independence and liberation movements in Africa, 1945-1994 / edited by Okwui Enwezor. Munich; New York: Prestel, 2001. 496pp. illus. (pt. color).

A project of Museum Villa Stuck, Munich, in co-operation with House of World Cultures, Berlin - Museum Villa Stuck, Munich 15 Febr. 2001 / Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin / Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago - 8 Sept. - 30 Dec. 2001 / P.S.1 and Museum of Modern Art, New York - 10 Febr. - 5 May 2002: ver http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/specials/2001/the_short_century

Susanne Wenger*,    Yemoja. 1958, Batik © Photo: Haupt & Binder
(*1915 Graz, Austria. Lived in Nigeria, where she was a Yoruba priestess. + 2009 Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria)

(notas) Beier, McEwen, Guedes, etc Metropolitan Museum - HEILBRUNN TIMELINE OF ART HISTORY

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/ht/?period=11&region=afg#/Key-Events

Metropolitan Museum - HEILBRUNN TIMELINE OF ART HISTORY - Guinea Coast, Central Africa, Southern Africa... 1900 A.D.–present:

 

CRONOLOGIA ÁFRICAS (selecção)

1937  The Fine Arts School is founded at Makerere College in Kampala, Uganda, and Margaret Trowell is appointed its director. She develops a curriculum that cultivates and preserves indigenous African styles and aesthetic values while introducing new media and methods of art production such as silkscreen printing and easel painting. Promising students, such as Tanzanian painter Sam Ntiro (1923–1993), are sent to study at the Slade School of Fine Art and the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The work of her students is displayed at the Imperial Institute, London, in 1939.

1938     Walter Battiss (1906–1982), Alexis Preller (1911–1975), and other young South African artists coalesce as the New Group in response to the British-inspired academicism of current South African art. Having seen indigenous African artworks such as San rock paintings, the artists seek an alternative modern art rooted in the integration of African and European aesthetics, and organize exhibitions showing work of black South African artists such as painter Gerard Sekoto (1913–1993). The New Group, and South African artists in general, benefit from the immigration of European intellectuals fleeing the totalitarian regimes emerging in Europe at this time.

1948   Apartheid in South Africa commences as the Afrikaner National Party comes to power under the leadership of Daniel F. Malan and the all-white parliament.

1948  The Polly Street Centre is established in Johannesburg as a community center for black township youths. Cecil Skotnes (born 1926) becomes the director of the arts workshop in 1952, and encourages students to study West and Central African sculpture. Artists such as Durant Sihlali, Ephraim Ngatane, Sydney Kumalo, Ben Macala, Louis Maqhubela, Lucas Sithole, and Helen Sebidi receive their initial training there.

1948  South African artist Ernest Mancoba (1904–2002) participates in the HØST COBRA exhibition in Copenhagen.

1950s-60s   Amancio Guedes, a Portuguese architect residing in Maputo, Mozambique, organizes informal workshops for young artists. Among the participants is Malangatana Ngwenya (born 1936), whose paintings are later shown by the Mbari Artists and Writers Club in Ibadan, Nigeria. (a nota faz uma antedatação: será de facto 1960s) 

"Afro modern" com desfalques (Santiago)

Pode anunciar-se a circulação de uma exposição quando não viajam algumas das suas obras determinantes?

A mostra "Afro Modern. Viajes a través del Atlántico negro" (Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea,  Santiago de Compostela, até 10 de octubre) parece justificar a deslocação, mas conviria saber que não vieram de Liverpool pelo menos duas obras que assumem papel de destaque no respectivo programa:

Jacob Lawrence's "Street to Mbari" (1964) at Afro Modern, Tate Liverpool. Photograph: National Gallery of Art, Washington (tempera over graphite on wove paper, 56.5 x 78.4 cm - Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James T. Dyke )

Pancho Guedes e Ulli Beier, 1968

Pancho Guedes, Lourenço Marques e Malangatana (1959...), com Frank McEwan e Julian Beinart: "the short cut", em

Beier, Ulli. Contemporary art in Africa. London: Pall Mall Press; New York: Frederick Praeger, 1968. xiv, 173pp. illus. (pt. color).

"An important early survey of contemporary African art focusing on the new artists, that is, those working in non-traditional modes and settings. Covers all the new schools of art with particular emphasis on Beier's own experience with the Oshogbo artists." Reviewed by E. Okechukwu Odita in Africa report (New York) January 1970, pp. 39-40. in Modern African Art : A Basic Reading List General Surveys and Critiques - http://www.sil.si.edu/SILPublications/ModernAfricanArt

Lourenço Marques, 1959..., Pancho Guedes no centro /num dos centros da afirmação da nova arte africana (contemporânea), com Frank McEwen, Julian Beinart, Ulli Beier e... Malangatana (o único nomeado, além da ref. a desenhos murais urbanos)

Lourenco Marques, Salisbury and Oshogbo "schools"

37 Valente Malangatana, Mulheres (óleo. s-d.), pág. 70