Charles Sekano (South African, born 1943)
Untitled and undated

signed ‘C h Sekano’ (lower left)
oil pastel on paper
76 x 51cm
Ksh 280,000–350,000
US$ 3,180–3,980
Sold Ksh 469,600

Provenance: Private Collection

Charles Sekano is a South African artist who was forced to flee the apartheid regime, emigrating to Paris and then to Kenya where he worked as a visual artist and musician in Nairobi during the 1980s.

He was part of a select group of Gallery Watatu artists under the guidance of Ruth Schaffner. His drawings and paintings celebrated the bohemian and multi-racial world of the Nairobi nightclubs that offered an escape from the oppression of the political regime of the time.

Charles Sekano is widely collected and he has exhibited in Kenya, Holland, Germany, Japan and the U.S. His works are in private collections across the world and in various museums including Volkekunde Museum, Frankfurt, and the Peabody Essex Museum, Massachusetts.