Chéri Samba

(Democratic Republic of Congo, born 1956)

J'aime la Couleur

Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired directly from the artist by the present owner.

'Colour is everywhere. To me, colour is life. Our heads must twirl around as if in a spiral to realize that everything around us is nothing but colours. So I say "I like colour" instead of saying "I like painting". Colour is the universe, the universe is life, painting is life.' – Cheri Samba(J'aime Chéri Samba, 2004: p. 126)

A kaleidoscopic celebration of colour, J'aime la Couleur (2004) belongs to the best known series by the Congolese painter Chéri Samba. It depicts the artist with a surrealist spiralling head unfurling upwards from his shoulders. The vibrant pink glittered interior of the figure's head materialises Samba's conviction that '[a]n artist must show people what he has inside' (J'aime Chéri Samba, 2004: p. 19). The artist's passion for colour is evidenced through the rainbow palette employed in the unconventional self-portrait. A line of multicoloured droplets fall from the end of a paintbrush clenched in the artist's teeth, echoing the beads that fall vertically within his coiled neck. The message is clear: colour is the lifeblood of the artist. While the majority of works in the J'aime la Couleur series set Samba's head against a bright blue backdrop, the present work offers a rare black background.

Samba's distinctive graphic style was fostered through his early training as a sign painter. Born in 1956, he left home at the age of 16 to apprentice himself to a studio in Kinshasa that specialised in producing signs for advertising. He found inspiration in the work of the more established sign painters Moké, Bodo, and Cheri Cherin which were displayed along Kasa Vubu Avenue - a central thoroughfare of the capital city. Samba was driven to differentiate himself by finding his own distinctive style. Influenced by his work as a comic strip illustrator for the bimonthly magazine Bilenge Info, he began introducing text to his paintings in 1975. He believed this would prompt viewers 'to stop and take time to read it, to get more into the painting and admire it' (J'aime Chéri Samba, 2004: p. 15). He coined this idiosyncratic inclusion of text in banners and speech bubbles the 'Samba signature'. The text offered Samba an opportunity to present narrative commentary on his work. In J'aime la Couleur, the writing in the blue box proclaims the artist's conviction in the importance of colour both aesthetically and as a metaphor for the diversity of life.

Bibliography
J'aime Chéri Samba, exh. cat., Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain, Paris, 24 January - 2 May 2004.