Ange Kumbi

Ange Kumbi is a significant representative of Congolese Popular Art. He has the same narrative style as Cheri Samba with whom he worked in the mid 70s in Kinshasa when they were both students in the workshop of the well-known publicist Mbuta Masunda. His paintings have centred rouend the everyday life of the Congolese living out their lives in the African cultural metropolis that is Kinshasa; scenes of street life, of lovers, of shady transactions, corruption, fraud , and crimes of politicians and their foreign accomplices. In its hey-day the city was known as Kin La Belle – Kinshasa the beautiful.

Decades of turmoil in the country, brought on by dictatorships, civil wars and corruption , have given the Congolese painters reason to paint with force. Ange Kumbi’s work is humorous , satirical and moving. Lately his paintings have incorporated a dreamlike surreal quality – the paintings are the essence of the collective memory of the people.

Ange Kumbi has been exhibiting since 1987 and exhibited , amongst others , in Berlin, Paris, Brussels, Vienna and the USA. He lived and worked in Kinshasa till 2003. Ange Kumbi now lives in exile in Erlangen in Germany.