Sane Wadu (Kenyan, born 1954)
Tasting Red Wine, 2018
Signed ‘Sane Wadu 18’ (lower right)
Oil on canvas
51 x 61.4 cm
Ksh 250,000–350,000
(US$ 2,275–3,200)
Sold Ksh 422,640
Provenance: direct from the artist
Sane Wadu began painting professionally in the 1980s, having given up his career as a teacher, and became one of Gallery Watatu’s most successful and iconic artists. Over a long and distinguished career, his distinctive, crowded and energetic paintings have been exhibited worldwide, including the USA, Germany, South Africa, Japan and the UK including in the seminal exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, Seven Stories about Modern Art in Africa in 1995.
Wadu co-founded the Ngecha Artists’ Association in the 1990s with fellow artists Eunice Wadu, Wanyu Brush and Chain Muhandi, and alongside his artist-wife Eunice continues to support young artists through The Sane Wadu Trust where they teach workshops every weekend from their studio in Naivasha.
Best known for his thickly applied oils on canvas, Wadu is a consummate storyteller. His work depicts current political and social situations, often crowded scenes of people with his trademark birds and animals half-hidden in the narratives. Wadu is one of the few artists of his generation who is still actively making work and engaging in the Kenyan art scene and this is a very new painting showing more defined borders and restrained brushwork.