Lot 57

Ehoodi Kichapi (Kenyan, born 1982)
Man Against City, 2008
Signed ‘jes’seng’ang’a 08’ (verso)
Oil on canvas
122 x 122 cm
Ksh 200,000 – 280,000 ARR
(US$) 1,950 – 2,700
Provenance: private collection

Sold Ksh 1,526,200

Ehoodi Kichapi is a contemporary artist based in Nairobi who works across painting and sculpture. His artistic career started in 2002, as a cartoonist and instructor of caricature drawing for the Kuruka Maisha art group. From this he developed a self-taught painting practice and in 2007 had his first solo show at the Alliance Française in Nairobi.

Kichapi’s paintings mix influences from Neo-expressionism – of intense subjectivity and rough physical handling – with influences from West African music, his own culture and his socially conscious responses to the injustices of Nairobi life.

Kichapi’s work has been exhibited regularly in Nairobi as well as abroad, including a solo exhibition in Brussels in 2013. He was one of seven African artists who featured in an exhibition titled Power and Rights, Contemporary Art from East and West Africa, that toured Denmark in 2011–12. In 2006 Kichapi was awarded the University of Kentucky’s Artist in Residence Program, a four-month Ruth Hunt Wood Fellowship.

This painting was bought by the current owner from a solo exhibition of Kichapi’s work at Ramoma Gallery, Nairobi, in 2008.