Painting: Painter

Biography: Samba wa Mbimba Nzinga, aka Chéri Samba, was born on November 30, 1956 in Kinito-Mvuila in Bas-Zaire. His father, a blacksmith, wants his son to succeed him in the trade. But Cheri is doing literary studies but lack of support, he can not pursue them and moved to Kinshasa.

Cheri introduces himself as an apprentice to the painter and draftsman Apuza whom he admires and is admitted to his studio. But the status of apprentice frustrates him. He would have liked to be hired as a collaborator since, since his youth, he has been drawing and at school he was considered a virtuoso in this field. Samba leaves his first boss three days after the engagement and will discover two other associate painters: Lomabaku and Mbuta Masunda with whom he spends only three months because his first boss recovers this time as a collaborator.

Desiring to realize his old dream of being independent, Chéri Samba opened his own workshop in 1975. He made some trips to the Congo in 1976 and 1977 to decorate a hotel in Brazzaville. In 1978, he went to Gabon where he was invited to paint cemeteries in a village. It has multiple participations in individual and collective exhibitions (1978, National Fair of Kinshasa, 1979, International Fair of Kinshasa, “Horizon 79” in Berlin in Germany, in 1980 and 81, French Cultural Center, 1982 Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris, Goethe Institute in Berlin …).

Observer of the society of which he likes to submit the sequences to the criticism, Chéri Samba paints topics or themes drawn in the daily life.

The originality of Samba’s painting is characterized by a palette diluted in a background of more or less uniform color that is illustrated by stylized characters in eloquent and expressive attitudes, whose message is reinforced by texts, as in comics . The painter Chéri Samba is a narcissistic being who, in his art, likes to put himself at the center of situations, whether lived or simply imagined.

The art of Samba served as inspiration for the filmmakers. Director Ngangura showed an interesting film based on the artist’s works and their themes, entitled Kin Kiesse, a true mirror of the joyful life of the capital of Zaire. This film received an award at the Ouagadougou African Film Festival (Fespaco).

Biography: Ludovic K. Fadairo was born on August 21, 1947 in Zinvié (Benin). From an early age, Fadaïro was destined for music. Today, he is one of the major painters of the African continent.

Between 1975 and 2000, Ludovic Fadaïro participated in more than 25 international group exhibitions in Canada, Nigeria, Morocco, Senegal, Togo, Ivory Coast, France, Poland, Belgium and the USA. During the same period, he realized 23 individual exhibitions, notably in Cotonou, Montreal, Abidjan, New York, London, Paris, Barcelona, ​​Bamako, Warsaw, Atlanta.