Solitude
By most accounts, Geoffrey Mukasa died a sad and lonely man in 2009. His was not just the melancholy that great artists accept as a kind of divine curse in order that they may exercise their gifts; he had also been sick and unwell. In fact, he died a few days before an exhibition of his paintings was set to open at Kampala’s Tulifanya Gallery, which since 1997 had shown his work in an annual solo show.
Whatever success Mukasa enjoyed when he was alive, he has eclipsed it in death. In this regard, too, his fate is that of many great artists, who toil in relative obscurity but achieve wild success and immortality after they die. Mukasa has never been forgotten.
After his death, the tributes said of Mukasa that he was among Uganda’s most important artists. One of the most interesting compliments was attributed to Frank Whalley, a long-time art critic in east Africa, who said of the departed artist: “It is too soon to see Mukasa’s work in context and to establish if it will continue to support his reputation as one of Uganda’s major artists, or if it will become the quiet pleasure of a knowledgeable few.”
Years later, a claim may be made in Mukasa’s favor that he was Uganda’s greatest painter of the 20th century, critically acclaimed and now commercially successful. His works have been auctioned by major houses, from Sotheby’s to Bonhams, and the prices have been rising over the years. One of his works, an oil painting titled “Celebrations,” fetched over $20,000 at the 2013 edition of the annual art auction organized by Nairobi’s Circle Art Gallery.
To honor Mukasa’s legacy, TWR is pleased to present a portfolio of a dozen paintings by him. They represent only a tiny fraction of Mukasa’s prolific output. Many of the pieces have appeared at auction and are now in private collections.
Mukasa was highly regarded for his wonderful descriptions of human intercourse with the natural environment. But he was even more spectacular when he zoomed in on fish and roosters and pigeons purely on their own terms. “Solitary Fish,” depicting a fish darting in water, captures the solitariness of life as Mukasa knew it, for, though he was the father of two girls and had the love of his mother, he was often alone and spent most of his time executing canvases at his home on the shores of Lake Victoria. “The Gift,” an oil painting on canvas executed in 1989, is Mukasa’s early masterpiece. The composition is haunting and almost religious, and yet the picture is beautifully executed in a conservative color scheme that somehow still shines.
Mukasa was versatile, comfortable as a draughtsman and collagist but also working well with oil paints, after they became widely available later in his career.
Geoffrey Ernest Katatanzi Mukasa was born in 1954 in Kampala, the son of a prominent doctor and the grandson of Apollo Kaggwa, a former prime minister of Buganda. After finishing high school at Kibuli Secondary School in Kampala, in 1978 he was sent to study in India, where he earned a degree in fine art from Lucknow University. The stint in India was transformative for Mukasa’s art, which afterwards was charged with Indian pictorial influences. After he returned from India in 1984, Mukasa’s first job was as a graphic artist with Uganda Television, as the public broadcaster was then known. He found the job unfulfilling and soon devoted himself to his work as a full-time painter.
Prof. George W. Kyeyune, a long-time art scholar and distinguished artist in his own right, wrote in a 2011 essay for Start Journal that the central influence for Mukasa’s work was a mid-century Indian painter named M.F. Husain. “So it is possible that Mukasa was triggered to respond to his African sensibilities through a secondary source. In other words, Mukasa discovered Africa from an Indian in India,” Kyeyune wrote in that essay. Mukasa, Kyeyune noted, “reassessed anatomy in plants, animals and human figures in an eccentric way” that often defied the rules of perspective.
Apropos of Whalley, if Mukasa was seen as odd and misunderstood in his life, more and more Africans enjoy his work these days. ▪
