Geoffrey Mukasa (Ugandan, 1954-2009)
The Three of Us, undated
Unsigned
Collage and oil on paper
64 x 49 cm
Ksh 385,000-495,000
(US$ 3,500-4,500)
Sold Ksh 528,300
Provenance: private collection of Klaus Betz
Geoffrey Mukasa was born in 1954 to one of Uganda’s most prominent doctors. Many people expected Mukasa to follow in his father’s footsteps but the murder of his father during Idi Amin’s coup brought drastic changes to his life, including his leaving Uganda to study art.
He travelled to India to take an art degree at Lucknow University, graduating in 1984. India greatly inspired Mukasa, exposing him to European and Indian aesthetic values. He threw himself into his work with vigour, focusing mainly on human relationships with the environment, interactions between humans and everyday living. In the early 1990s, on returning to Uganda, Mukasa became a key figure in the movement to revive cultural life in Kampala. This cultural movement was seen as a unifying force and an inspiration for the nation’s recovery from years of military dictatorship.
Mukasa’s oldest friends said that he started to do collages in his early years as an artist because there were no classic art materials to be purchased in Kampala. He used paper from magazines and other found material to make collages. Later, when art materials were available, he enjoyed painting huge canvases and achieved great success.
His work is widely collected and exhibited, and appears regularly at international auctions. Publications include the recent ‘Mukasa Geoffrey – the artist’s life in Uganda’, AKA Gallery Kampala published by Maria Fischer, Rose Kirumira, Paul Lubowa and Josephine Mukasa, 2011.