Congolese painters

Congolese painting has two great streams. The first began in colonial workshops: Antoinette Lubaki and her husband painted watercolours of animals and village life in the 1920s that were shown in Europe, and from 1946 the Hangar workshop in Lubumbashi, led by the Frenchman Pierre Romain-Desfossés, produced painters such as Pilipili Mulongoy, known for his decorative scenes of birds, fish and forest.

The second is the Congolese popular painting of Kinshasa and Lubumbashi from the 1970s, painted for local buyers and full of humour and politics. Chéri Samba, Chéri Chérin, Moké, Bodo and Cheik Ledy painted city life, scandals and history, and Tshibumba Kanda Matulu painted a whole history of Zaire. Today painters such as JP Mika and Rita Mukebo, and multimedia artists such as Aimé Mpane, continue to renew it. These are the Congo's painters, most looked-up first. See also Congolese artists.