Art Auction East Africa 2021 Lot 4 George Kyeyune

George Kyeyune (Ugandan, born 1962)
Untitled, 2001
Signed ‘KYEYUNE G 2001’ (lower left)
Oil on canvas
28.5 x 45 cm
Ksh 285,000 – 455,000
(US$) 2,500 – 4,000
Provenance: private collection

Sold Ksh 422,640

George William 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 Sayajirao University of Baroda. The three years that he spent in Gujarat were transformative to Kyeyune’s artistic practice; through looking at the Indian religions and art forms that survived colonialism he was encouraged to question his own cultural inheritance.

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

This painting, acquired from the seller directly from the artist, is an example of Kyeyune’s formidable ability to capture unstable moments, saturated with feeling, where paint and colour become presence.
This artwork has been cleaned and restored and comes with a condition report.