Kivuthi Mbuno (Kenyan, born 1947)
Untitled, undated
Signed ‘Kivuthi mbuno’ (lower right)
Mixed media on paper
47.1 x 72.4 cm
Ksh 100,000–170,000
(US$ 900–1,550)
Bought In
Provenance: private collection
Prior to becoming an artist, Kivuthi Mbuno worked as a cook in the safari industry, which led him to travel into the interior of both Kenya and Tanzania. These long treks combine with memories and mythologies of traditional Wakamban life in Mbuno’s narrative works. His painting career started in the late-seventies and his meticulous, unique works quickly came to hold an important place amongst his generation of Kenyan artists.
His distinctive style using coloured pencils, ink and pastels leads the viewer into a fantastical world; sometimes hostile, sometimes harmonious. In this work a dramatic and strange scene entwines man and animal, nature and culture in a cycle of entanglement.
Mbuno has exhibited widely, in museums and private galleries in Europe and the USA, including the Center for African Art in New York. His work is collected by major museums such as the Völkerkunde Museum in Frankfurt, Germany, the Museum of African Art in New York, the Dallas Museum of Art, the National Museum of Art in Washington DC, the Saatchi Gallery and the Tate Modern in London.