Stephen Kasumba (Ugandan, born 1960)
The Artist, 1998
Signed ‘KASUMBA 98’ (lower left)
Oil on canvas
99 x 84 cm
Ksh 275,000-385,000
(US$ 2,500-3,500)
Sold Ksh 258,280
Provenance: private collection
Stephen Kasumba studied at Kyambogo University, Kampala, and later at the Margaret Trowell School of Fine Arts, where he completed his post graduate study in Fine Art.
Kasumba’s lusciously colourful paintings often play with subverting pictorial conventions as a way to create modern images, inspired by Buganda legends and traditions.
Kasumba has exhibited locally and internationally. In the early 1990s he won an art prize which sent him to France where he met the German artist Matthias Koerner with whom he held joint exhibitions, including at the Kampala Sheraton Hotel in 1996 and in Cottbus, Germany the same year. In 2001 he participated in the Thupelo artist workshop and exhibition in South Africa in 2001.
Carrying Gifts was exhibited at Tulifanya Gallery (now AKA Gallery) in the late 1990s, where it was acquired by the current owner.