Artist: Kaballa Date: ca. 1940s-1950s Medium: Oil on paper Size: 37.9 x 51.5 cm (14 15/16 x 20 ¼ in.) Description: “This small painting is by Kaballa, one of the members of the Lubumbashi painting atelier which was a key modernist movement in central Africa. Established by amateur artist-patron Pierre Romain-Desfossés in the late 1940s, the atelier was variously known as “Le Hangar,” the “Elisabethville Indigenous Art Studio” and the Académie des beaux arts and produced a significant body of successful decorative works. Desfossés, like a number of colleagues such as Frank McEwen in Rhodesia and Pierre Lods in Brazzaville, expounded a laissez-faire approach to teaching while simultaneously providing his students with certain palettes and “native” inspirations to pursue their work. Kaballa, and other members of the Lubumbashi school focused their attention on genre scenes of flora and fauna, incorporating the human figure only as part of the larger narrative. This painting seems to present the crocodile from a different perspective. Typically identified as a dangerous predator that lurks in the water, here the animal seems to be a protective parent guarding its unhatched young.” Source: Smithsonian National Museum of African Art
