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146 - François THANGO (DRC, Brazzaville 1936-1981) African figures…
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Estimate €2,000 - €3,000
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François THANGO (DRC, Brazzaville 1936-1981) African figures and free forms Oil on canvas 43 x 278 cm Signed lower right THANGO Not mounted on stretcher. *** Oil on canvas, signed lower right, 16⅞ × 109½ in. Born in Brazzaville in 1936 to a Cameroonian father and a mother of Bawoyo (Cabinda) origin, François Thango was one of the founding figures of the École de Poto-Poto, which Pierre Lods set up in 1951 and where he kept him among his first pupils. In 1958, he represented the school at the Brussels World Fair. The following year, he crossed the River Zaire to settle in Léopoldville - now Kinshasa - and joined the circle of artists supported by the patron Maurice Alhadeff, under whose aegis his work reached full maturity. In 1961, six of his paintings were shown in New York; he also exhibited in Europe and received the Unicef prize in Paris. It was in Kinshasa that Thango developed his most personal and singular practice: canvases of impressive dimensions - six, eight, sometimes eleven metres long - mounted on frames and laid flat on tables. In these vast friezes, he unfurls a world populated by figures, animals and plant forms in a rigorously two-dimensional composition of flat tints and rings, in which black contours carve out the space and bold colours are organised in sovereignly balanced surfaces. After Alhadeff's death in 1972, Thango left Kinshasa for good and returned to Brazzaville, where he died in 1981. A great precursor of painting in Central Africa François Thango was born in Brazzaville in 1936 and belonged to the first generation of painters of the Poto-Poto School, founded by Pierre Lods in the early 1950s. He was soon noticed for the expressive power of his painting, and in 1958 he was chosen to represent the Congolese school at the Universal Exhibition in Brussels. The following year he moved to The following year he moved to Kinshasa (Léopoldville), and in the 1960s-1970s, under the patronage of Maurice Alhadeff, developed a deeply personal pictorial language, combining animal figures, vegetation, masks and stylised silhouettes in vast compositions with bold colours and sharp black outlines. Often likened to the great artists of Poto-Poto, he differs from them in his freer, almost visionary approach, constructing imaginary spaces on the border between figuration and abstraction. From the 1960s onwards, his work was exhibited in Europe and the United States, notably in New York and Paris, and featured in several exhibitions devoted to modern African art. Today considered one of the leading figures of Congolese modernism, François Thango remains one of the most singular artists to emerge from the Poto-Poto School.
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About the sale Arab, African & Indian Modernities
Auction location
Auction time 06/18/2026 at 2:30 PM
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