Lot 14 George William Kyeyune

George William Kyeyune (Ugandan, born 1962)
Landscape with Red, circa 1998
Signed ‘KYEYUNE. G. ‘98’ (lower right)
Oil on canvas
43 x 56.5 cm

Ksh 330,000-440,000
(US$ 3,000-4,000)
Sold Ksh 328,720

Provenance: private collection of Klaus Betz

George Kyeyune graduated from the Margaret Trowell School of Fine Arts, Kampala in 1985. He then travelled to India where he achieved an MFA, specializing in Sculpture, from the Maharaja Sayajiraho University of Baroda. The 3 years that he spent in Gujurat were transformative to Kyeyune’s artistic practice; through looking at the Indian religions and art forms which survived colonialism he was encouraged to question his own cultural inheritance.

On returning to Kampala, Kyeyune re-joined the Margeret Trowell School of Fine Arts, teaching Sculpture. He continued his own practice, sculpting and exhibiting widely in Kampala, and in 1996 he returned also to painting. In 1999 he received a scholarship for doctoral study in History of African Art at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London.

The seller was one of the first to begin collecting Kyeyune’s work, from the time he graduated from Makerere in 1985. This abstract landscape is a remarkable painting in Kyeyune’s oeuvre, whose works tend to be more figurative, displaying moments of everyday life and people.