In 2013, the late Sidney Littlefield Kasfir (may she rest in peace) wrote an article in which she challenges conventional narratives of Modern African art history, which often marginalize or exclude certain regions, artists, and art forms. She argues for a more inclusive and nuanced understanding of modern African art, one that recognizes the diversity of artistic practices across the continent and the complex interplay of local and global influences. This course taps into this debate by making available a body of artworks from the East African region — a region that has not received much attention. It draws inspiration from an original exhibition concept by Okwui Enwezor, who first examined the dynamic and politically charged era of independence in African art and history and how liberation movements and art were bound together in forging new cultural identities. It immerses students in the creative experiences of Eastern Africa, enhancing their ability to understand and appreciate the region’s art and its contributions to continental and global cultural discourses. The reference to East African modernisms is deliberate. While acknowledging the complex and sometimes contested boundaries of individual countries within East Africa, it looks beyond these demarcations without dismissing their significance. Grounded in the ideals of the East African Community (EAC) — a regional bloc currently comprising the Democratic Republic of Congo, Federal Republic of Somalia, Republic of Burundi, Republic of Kenya, Republic of Rwanda, Republic of South Sudan, Republic of Uganda, and the United Republic of Tanzania — the course also considers the ongoing discussions regarding the potential inclusion of Ethiopia and Djibouti. It acknowledges the shared cultural regionality encompassing over 400 million people. It aligns with the collective identity enshrined in the Treaty Establishing the East African Community. This includes those in Ethiopia and Djibouti currently engaged in discussions about joining the EAC and recognizes the shared history linking artistic practices in the EAC countries with those in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

The course examines the cultural intersections that have shaped distinct regional modernisms in artistic practice. At the geopolitical level, it resonates with Article 102 of the treaty, which promotes “co-operation in education and training within the Community,” as it brings together researchers from Addis Ababa University, Makerere University, the University of  Dar es Salaam, and the University of Nairobi—a connection dating back to the 1930s when formal art education was introduced at Makerere College (now Makerere University), drawing students from each of these countries. However, understanding the plurality of East African modernism enriches the discourse in other interesting ways:

This course challenges the traditional Western-centric narrative of art history, drawing from the argument presented in A Companion to Modern African Art (Salami & Visonà, 2013), which advocates against evaluating African art based on European paradigms and emphasizes understanding the intricate aspects of African histories, issues, and values that informed the art practice. The course explores the concept of multiple modernities that have shaped diverse artistic modernisms in Africa. It acknowledges the varied and often competing influences shaping African artistic production, particularly that of East Africa. Aligned with this nuanced debate, this course allows students to understand East African art within its specific historical contexts, emerging from a complex interplay of local, “Oriental,” and Western resources and ideologies. Students examine a rich and multifaceted artistic landscape enriched by multiple histories, actors, actions, and activities. 

Secondly, echoing Okechukwu Nwafor’s analysis of Nigerian modernism in Decolonizing the Modern? Art and Postcolonial Modernism in Twentieth-Century Nigeria  (2019), this pluralized perspective of modernism in East Africa rejects the notion of non-Western modernisms as mere imitations of Western modernism. Instead, it emphasizes how African modernists adapted and transformed global influences within distinct cultural and historical contexts. It recognizes how non-Western modernisms enrich the global cultural landscape by drawing on indigenous (including Swahili) traditions while simultaneously addressing the socio-political realities of colonialism and its aftermath. Furthermore, it allows students to consider non-indigenous traditions, such as Arab and Shirazi influences, that have shaped modernist art in East Africa (Sheriff, 2008). 

Finally, and crucially, this course encompasses the diverse modernist tendencies within the Eastern African region, including those originating outside Western-inspired formal educational institutions—most notably, the rich array of art produced by collectives, whose creative practices will be examined in Module 2. As such, the course addresses critical gaps in the discourse and archival details surrounding East African modernisms, thus serving students, researchers, and academics interested in the subject. 

The 1960s provide key inspiration to the course. This was the period when artists across Africa participated in regional exhibitions celebrating the utopian ideals accompanying the birth of newly independent nations. As if to confirm, archival evidence points to exhibitions commemorating Tanganyika’s independence in 1961 and Kenyan independence in 1963 that formed the theme of Jonathan Kingdom’s oil painting Freedom Match (1963) (Fig. 1). But the exhibition African Art: An Exhibition to Celebrate the Independence of Uganda,6 held in October 1962, merits further mention because its surviving catalogue informed the development of this course. Curated by Cecil Todd, the African Art Exhibition received generous funding from the Ugandan government, which had a vested interest in the pan-African ideal. This ideal was immortalized in the naming of Nkrumah Hall and the creation of the Nkrumah statue at Makerere University in the early sixties (Fig. 2). The first regional governments shared this ideal, often expressing this shared vision through impressive state-sponsored projects. For example, Ethiopia has a pan-African decorative program at the headquarters of the OAU and AU (and Zeleke discusses such projects in Module 1); Kenya’s Kenyatta Convention Center (Fig. 3) immortalizes Jomo Kenyatta as the embodiment of pan-Africanism. This pan-African ideal, central to the African Art Exhibition, is also fundamental to the East African Community and anchors this course. 

Secondly, the catalogue for the African Art Exhibition confirms that modernist art itself, celebrating the postcolonial states of East Africa as well as pan-Africanist movements, was produced by the artists themselves hailing from different countries. For example, the African Art Exhibition was intended to celebrate the independence of Uganda. As such, it showcased the “sketch for the Independence Monument” this being a visual representation of what Gregory Maloba (himself a Kenyan) had produced as the Independence Monument (1962) (Fig. 4) for Uganda. However, also presented in the exhibition was an artwork referred to as a Painting on Linen Battle of Adowa from Ethiopia. As Mifta Zeleke explains in Module 1 the Battle of Adwa of 1896 has important symbolism for Ethiopians; it has captured the imagination of modernist artists who celebrate the postcolonial state in the country. That this linen was presented in Uganda would suggest that the celebration of the triumph of Ethiopia over colonial Italy spread beyond national borders and was of special significance for the newly independent former colonies like Uganda. Also, that the linen was exhibited with contemporary and traditional artifacts drawn from Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia (that included the present-day Republic of Eritrea), Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan (this included present-day Republic of South Sudan), Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe, built a strong foundation for a course on regional modernism being proposed. In Modules 1-4, Dominicus Makukula, George Kyeyune, Muhunyo Maina, and Mifta Zaleke, use experiences from Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia respectively, to demonstrate how this course builds on regionality, continentality, and their surrounding discourses. The course trains learners to appreciate the interconnecting threads that East African artists, at home and in the diaspora, mobilize to make art. It emphasizes how national identity does not prevent artists (such as Theresa Musoke, Skunder Boghossian, Elimo Njau, Leonard Kateete, Rosemary Karuga, Sam Ntiro, etc.) from claiming their regional and continental identities.  

Third, the African Art Exhibition showcased Ugandan modernism in a nuanced, complex, and unprecedented way. It collapsed the hierarchy that privileged easel painting (and sculpture modeling) by formally trained artists over “traditional crafts.” Margaret Trowell, the founder of the Makerere Art School (which trained many pioneer modernist artists in the region), had maintained and reinforced this hierarchy within formal art education. Nonetheless, the African Art show presented these traditional crafts as “Art” (capitalized to distinguish them from their typical presentation as ethnographic objects in the Uganda Museum) and exhibited them alongside “contemporary Art.” This offered a holistic representation of the “artistic achievements of African people, both past and present.” 

As demonstrated by Kyeyune, Makukula, Muhunyo, and Zaleke in Modules 1-4, this course continues this inclusive approach. Module 2, for example, examines how East African modernist artists have used traditions, and traditional arts specifically, to create art celebrating their identity and that of the postcolonial state. The Module also initiates debate on works through which artists question the successes of these postcolonial states, contrasting the prevalent hopelessness and misrule with the optimism for happiness and good governance anticipated at the time of independence in the 1960s. 

To deepen learners’ understanding and give context to the artists’ roles in shaping the utopian and dystopian visions of the postcolonial state, the course also departed from literary sources in order to examine the complex interplay between art, art-making, meaning-making, cultural developments and politics. For example, it drew inspiration from a play Kenya’s Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o’s (then James Ngugi) premiered at Makerere University in October 1962 as the Play of the Black Hermit (and published as the Black Hermit in 1968). Most specifically, the Modules explore Ngũgĩ’s argument that African independence often resulted in the replacement of colonial leaders with postcolonial “strongmen.” While Benedict Anderson, in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (2016), argued that the imagined realities of nation-states—republican institutions, common citizenships, popular sovereignty, national flags, anthems, etc.—represent democratic states and institutions that dismantle “dynastic empires, monarchical institutions, absolutisms, inherited nobilities, ghettoes, and so forth,” the  East African region arguably moved in the reverse direction in different but related ways at the time of independence.

The political logic behind the “strongmen” argument during the 1960s suggested that constitutions required strong men for their protection. Initially proposed in Ghana, this idea gained traction in East Africa by the mid-sixties, where strongmen ultimately eclipsed constitutions, and the state itself, and were revered and immortalized on national currencies, such as the Ethiopian dollar (1961–1966) and birr (1966–2003), and the shillings of Kenya (Fig. 5 and Fig. 6), Tanzania (Fig. 7), and Uganda (Fig. 8 and Fig. 9). Strongmen also dominated public spaces such as the renamed national squares in Nairobi and Dodoma.  Allegorical sculptures—like the statue of Haile Selassie in Addis Ababa, the Obote Medallion (originally installed at the Parliament of Uganda in 1963 and later moved to the Uganda Museum) (Fig. 10), the Julius Nyerere Statue (Fig. 11) and Statue of Mzee Ali Hassan Mwinyi (Fig. 12) and the Mzee Jomo Kenyatta Monument (Fig. 13 and Fig. 14)—were commissioned to represent these strongmen as the very nations themselves.  

And yet these strongmen—the Osagyefo of Ghana, Emperors of Ethiopia, and Mzees of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania—did not ultimately guarantee lasting stability for the new nations and, as demonstrated in this course, artists often provided the commentary openly or in exile. While Tanzania has experienced relative stability, even there, Mzee Julius Kamabarage Nyerere (commonly called Mwalimu Nyerere) leveraged his position to establish the dominant Chama Cha Mapinduzi party, which has maintained a tight grip on power since 1961 by suppressing political opposition. Elsewhere in the region, brutal regimes in Uganda, Kenya, and Ethiopia have caused widespread suffering and despair. As such, and as Ngũgĩ rightly observed, the promises of stability, progress, welfare, and order—made during rallies promoting independence and visualized in J. M. Kasapo’s 1961 painting Political Meeting (1961) (Fig. 15)—became mere isolated “patches” of stability. Obi Egbuna’s 1965 play The Anthill fictionalized such patches as “Tongo,” “an oasis of political stability in the hot heart of Africa” (Egbuna, 1965, p. 2). 

Drawing on Okwui Enwezor’s notion of “the Short Century” as both critique and metaphor, this course examines the skepticism surrounding the political context of African independence—a skepticism shared by modernist artists across East Africa—and revisits this vexed question of independence within the region:

 This course addresses this and related questions in the subtopics, organized as Modules 1, 2, 3 and 4, with further materials (visual and otherwise) available in the archive. 

This Module builds upon four essays that examine modernist art in East Africa through a variety of archival sources. Instead of defaulting to the singular logic of hegemonic Western modernism—which, as Okwui Enwezor argues, risks portraying East African modernist artists as mere imitators of Western culture—this Module emphasizes the plurality of modernism. Students will learn to appreciate multiple modernities, including those originating outside the West, and understand the historical contexts in which they shaped the emergence of Eastern African modernism. In Uganda, as George Kyeyune details a similar project promoting education and modernity in Buganda (and Uganda) was undertaken by Kabaka (King) Muteesa I in the 1880s. However, Muteesa I’s kingdom and its trade links were ultimately consumed by the colonial project and its foreign definitions of modernity. Forced to cede power and authority through a series of “agreements” (most especially the 1900 Buganda Agreement and 1955 Buganda Agreement), the people of Buganda, called the Baganda (the largest ethnic group in Uganda), were forced to submit to colonial agencies imposing preconceived views of reality based on definitions of modernity that impacted lives in Uganda as it did in Kenya, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar. In contrast, Tewodros built a modern empire based on a model that rivalled the Western modernity found in the major cities of Italy, Britain, and France during the 1860s. Importantly, he achieved this without Europeanizing Ethiopians. This is the context in which Zeleke reconsiders Ethiopian modernism in dialogue with existing scholarship. Mifta Zeleke traces it back to the nineteenth-century initiatives by Emperor Tewodros II.

Against this backdrop, Module 1 departs from three complementary angles. First, it concedes that colonialism (as modernity) did not uniformly impact the East African region. For instance, it was prematurely terminated in the Battle of Adwa in Ethiopia visualized by an unknown artist in Fig. 16; it was experienced differently in Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, and Zanzibar (and later Tanzania). Thus, there cannot be one homogeneous modernist art in the region, but rather a variety of them including the Samburu body painting in Kenya which, as Muhunyo rightly observes, parallels and critiques easel painting as an elitist category of modernist art. 

Second, under this Module students will appreciate that the EAC region has a variety of cultures cherished by the Bantu-speaking, Cushitic-speaking, Nilotic-speaking, Khoisan-speaking, Semitic-speaking, and Omotic-speaking peoples, among others, in the region. These have shaped (and continue to shape) the postures of artists as they confront a variety of modernities in East Africa while producing a modernist art that is as formal—in the works of Gregory Maloba (from Kenya and Uganda), Elimo Njau (from Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda), Sam Ntiro (from Tanzania and Uganda) (Fig. 17), and Gebre Kristos Desta (from Ethiopia)—as it is textual in the paintings of Wosene Kosrof (from Ethiopia) (Fig. 18), Pilkington Sengendo (from Uganda) (Fig. 19), and Ali Darwish (Fig. 20) and George Lilanga (from Tanzania), among others. 

This Module examines the history of East African modernism, acknowledging the influence of formal art education and Western curricula while recognizing that their influences were not unilaterally imposed. East African modernism is not, as Makukula argues, merely derivative of European modernism. Echoing David Scott, this Module situates East African modernism within two contexts: first, the ambivalent nature of colonialism, which produced both enabling and constraining effects for colonized subjects seeking to define their own historical and political destinies; and second, the confluence of multiple influences, including indigenous traditions, colonial history, the independence movement, and—as Makukula notes in Module 1—Ujamaa ideology. Students will examine how colonialism, as a form of modernity, was renegotiated and hybridized through layers of cross-pollination between regional civilizations and complex contacts among indigenous populations (categorized as “native” using colonial, racial tropes and classifications), Arab, Shirazi, and Western cultures. The Module will interrogate the negotiations that nurtured Eastern African modernism as a practice that asserted identity, constructed the postcolonial state, and offered a critique of it. 

 In this Module, Muhunyo uses specific examples from Kenya to guide students to examine East African modernism as an art form arising from the complex interplay between preexisting indigenous artistic traditions and the emergent capitalist economy of the early 20th century. He does not make a case for an uncritical, nostalgic, atavistic, return to a past untouched by colonial modernity, which in turn produced a self-legitimating hegemonic lineal art history based on a Eurocentric view that East African art lacked sophistication before the arrival of Europeans. He trains students to appreciate

that simultaneously policed and constrained alternative modernities. As learners will discover in Module 2, the situation that unfolded in Tanzania closely mirrored Kenya’s. They will engage with artworks produced by the Makonde, where collectives played a yet greater role in producing modernist art that proclaimed a state-sponsored Tanzanian identity while responding to both nationalist sentiment and market dynamics. Students will also learn from Zeleke that, similar to Kenya and Tanzania,

They will examine works by artists like Gebre Kristos Desta, Skunder Boghossian, and Wosene Kosrof, among others, who were trained in Western art schools but whose commitment to producing a distinct Ethiopian modernism based on Ethiopian culture and traditions is undeniable. They will also see examples of artworks that critiqued the excesses of power, such as Getachew Yosef’s Growth in Unity, which critiques the weaponization of national consciousness.  

However, learners will also find that Uganda presents a more nuanced historical trajectory for students of East African modernism. As a British protectorate, Uganda was governed under a complex legal framework established through agreements, most notably the 1900 Buganda Agreement. While these agreements ostensibly granted local authorities full authority over culture and traditions under the “Dual Mandate,” the introduction of the Indian Civil and Criminal codes in 1898, and later ordinances promulgated by the colonial state, particularly those enacted in accordance with the 1903 Order-in-Council formally establishing Uganda as a modern state, imposed restrictions on this authority. 

As Kyeyune demonstrates in Module 2, under this legal framework the impact of European contact on traditional art, ostensibly protected under native authority, was multifaceted. First, while some missionaries and Governors denigrated traditional artifacts through evangelization and rhetoric, others, such as Catholic missionary Reverend John Roscoe,  

Anglican missionary Margaret Trowell, and Reverend Mathers, collaborated with some colonial governors (for example Sir Hesketh Bell) to collect, research, document, and preserve these artifacts and their rich ethnographies, ultimately contributing to the establishment of the Uganda Museum in the period 1907-1954. Second, students will learn that African art students and their parents resisted Margaret Trowell’s focus on tradition as the foundation for formal art education and figurative modernism, showing greater interest in such work around independence. Learners will also find Kyeyune’s use of examples, such as artworks made by Elimo Njau, Gregory Maloba, Kefa Sempangi, Pilkington Sengendo, Francis Naggenda, and Peter Mulindwa, to make his point particularly insightful. These artists deliberately integrated traditions into experimental modernist projects from the 1960s onward. Crucially, and in his examination of the “Short Century,” Kyeyune will argue that beyond identity, Ugandan modernist artists have used traditions to both celebrate and critique the postcolonial state, especially its darker aspects. This trend, emerging in the mid-1960s, is powerfully illustrated by the themes (and scenes) of morbidity and mortality in John Alacu’s 1978 paintings, particularly in his Mother’s Nightmare (Fig. 21), in which Alacu metaphorically depicts a state devouring its citizens. 

Formal art education was introduced in Ethiopia as a cornerstone of modern state-building. Haile Selassie, viewing himself as both a guarantor of the “great tradition” and a vanguard of Ethiopian identity, envisioned artists playing a pivotal role in state formation and the preservation of power.

Like Selassie, subsequent political actors, including the Derg regime and the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (the EPRDF), have selectively appropriated and reinterpreted historical narratives to legitimize their rule, mobilize support, and shape national identity. As Zeleke noted, artists like Tekle were compelled to work for the government to survive during a period, when mere survival was an “art and magic in itself.” Students will see how this strategic use of memory, while contributing to social divisions and hindering a shared national vision, also fostered the creative talent necessary for producing monuments, memorials, and public spaces as sites. These have become key battlegrounds in the struggle over historical meaning, reflecting and reinforcing ongoing political dynamics (Yared, 2023). They chart a complex trajectory, in which initially promising art students were sent abroad for training to countries like Poland, Germany, and the Soviet Union, only to later return to become art teachers. By the 1980s, however, all artists received training within Ethiopia’s art schools. Notably, these art schools enjoyed autonomy, unlike their counterparts in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, where formal art education was integrated into mainstream university curricula. Learners will engage with the evolution of formal art education in Uganda and examine the way

George Kyeyune provides a set of lenses through which East African modernism evolves on a trajectory midwifed by the Makerere Art School (currently the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Art) at the then Makerere College (presently Makerere University). Initially founded by the missionary, and art educator, Margaret Trowell the tertiary school’s curriculum has been nourished by creative initiatives by individuals, collectives, and workshops. This throws a spotlight on the complex interplay between pedagogy, artistic practice, and the notions of a pan-African identity informed by the philosophy and culture of Négritude. This frames the texture of Uganda as a postcolonial state, where culture becomes central to the country’s national flag and anthem.  

This debate also invites a close examination of how formal art institutions in Uganda, which provided foundational training and exposure to global art trends during the rise of nationalism and independence movements. But it also details the critique of prioritizing Western (formal) aesthetics over indigenous artistic traditions. This tension came to a head in the 1960s when Elimo Njau mounted the His Masters Hobby Exhibition (catalogue 3) at the Uganda Museum in November 1962.  Njau is one of the artists who advocated for a decolonized, local aesthetic language, urging Ugandan art education to move away from its dependence on Western materials and visual vocabulary. He also called on Makerere Art School graduates to abandon the elitist (“ivory tower”) mentality fostered by their training and consider ways to contribute to the development of their communities. Njau’s radical position aligned with the developmentalist theories through which the new African political elite gained legitimacy by promising unprecedented economic prosperity to communities which were often othered as “the poor.” His assertion that “[w]e have not washed our face to see a new day with a new heart and soul after colonialism. When you look at yourself in the mirror and a shadow of your colonial professor is still standing behind you, you only see a blurred image of yourself” (Kyeyune 2003,107) clashed with the multiculturalism espoused by the leadership at the Makerere Art School.  In opposition Gregory Maloba characterized Njau’s stance as “racism in reverse.”

The debate coincided with a cultural war that escalated into what Idi Amin Dada termed the Ugandan “economic war”. As demonstrated in Module 3, this ‘cultural-economic’ contest stemmed from the lingering legacy of colonialism (Lunyiigo, 2021), which created a racist social hierarchy in Uganda—colonials at the top, followed by Indians and Goans, and then native Ugandans—perceived as favoring the Indian (Lunyiigo, 1987) and Goan communities. The unique commonwealth-led citizenship categories which was adopted by Uganda’s 1962 constitution, proved to be short-lived. It was violently and unlawfully abandoned in the 1966 to 1967 constitutions, after which Uganda descended into a tumultuous period of trauma, fear, and despondency. This period is reflected in Robert Serumaga’s plays Renga Moi (1972) and Mayirikiti (1974), John Ruganda’s play The Burdens (1972), and the decades of senseless loss of life and property summarized in Alex Mukulu’s play Thirty Years of Banana (1993) and visualized in the still birth in Mathias Kyazze Muwonge’s Misfortune (1985) (Fig. 22), the repercussions of which continue to haunt the country today. 

This turbulent history tragically impacted Makerere University, notably the 1972 summary execution of its Vice Chancellor, Frank Kalimuzo, on the orders of Idi Amin. As Ignatius Serulyo notes in Zuleika Kingdon’s Visions and Dreams (1994), the artists’ community was also affected: expatriates fled, the art market contracted, and art supplies became scarce. However, this period also resulted in increased artistic vitality, shaping Uganda’s modernism. Artists like John Alacu (Mother’s Nightmare), Christine Driciru (Insects and Crowds), J. Opolot (The Termite), E. Kasumba (Gangsters in the Night), and J. Yiga (Vultures) created visual narratives that questioned the country’s tumultuous political landscape. Alternative exhibition spaces emerged in nearby Kenya, where artists like Norbert Kaggwa discreetly transported their work. Exhibitions at venues such as the African Centre Gallery and Whitechapel Gallery in London, and Vienna (Austria), suggest that Uganda’s modernist artists (like their counterparts in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania) participated in a global discourse in which biennales (for example the Cairo Biennale of 1984 and the 1st Johannesburg Biennale of 1995) were fast becoming a feature on the international exhibition calendar. Their art critiqued the sociopolitical context. Artists and collectives, often led by Makerere alumni, navigated social, economic, and political tensions through experimentation with materials, processes, and artistic expressions. 

By the 1970s, this experimentation led artists like Theophilus Mazinga Kalyankolo, Mark Muyaba, Joseph Ntensibe, and Katongole Waswa to explore wax and dyes on fabric, creating pictorial narratives based on African religious and secular motifs. Later, other artists experimented with performance art, particularly through the LaBa! Arts Festivals organized by the German-funded Goethe-Zentrum Kampala/Uganda. These festivals connected art to public spaces, drawing on the interplay between poetry, music, visual and performing arts, and incorporating veiled political commentary on governance and cultural values. Workshops and collectives like the Ngoma International Artists’ Workshop provided alternative spaces for artists to explore and exchange ideas.  

These experimentations, as interventions, shaped, and were shaped by, the “democratization” (Kyeyune, 2003, pp164-166) of modernist art and its institutions in Uganda, fostering a more inclusive and dynamic art scene that challenged the Makerere Art School’s dominance. Artists, described by Ignatius Serulyo as “jacks of trades” in Visions and Dreams, pursued diverse career paths beyond traditional art teaching roles in secondary and tertiary education including roles for example in the military, and agriculture. New institutions, including the Kyambogo School of Art and Design, Michelangelo School of Art, and Naggenda International Art and Design Institute emerged to offer new opportunities to Uganda’s modernist artists. 

With respect to the position of art schools in Kenya, this Module will guide students to examine the roles of Margaret Trowell, Derek Morgan, Cecil Todd and Selby Mvusi in shaping formal art education. As Muhunyo Maina explains, these instructors nurtured the first generation of Kenyan modernists who emphasized themes of community, social, and cultural development. Students will follow this debate to explore the diverse and often conflicting approaches to art education in East Africa during the mid-20th century. Muhunyo introduces Kenyan luminaries who were influential transnationally, such as Maloba, Njau, Eli Nathan Kyeyune and artists like Louis Mwaniki, and Asaph Ng’ethe, whose practices were situated within the complex socio-political context of colonialism and rising Kenyan nationalism. Each artist represents distinct pedagogical philosophies and artistic visions. Students will discuss the different pedagogies, ranging from Trowell’s emphasis on stylized representation to Todd’s and Morgan’s focus on observed forms and their formal representation and Mvusi’s promotion of cultural relevance—all contributing to the evolving landscape of East African modernism.

By comparing and contrasting their approaches, students will gain insight into the complexities and contradictions inherent in shaping art education as a foundation for modernist practice within a multicultural space during a period of profound social and cultural transformation in Kenya. Like Uganda and Ethiopia, Kenya’s postcolonial state descended into authoritarianism by the 1970s under Jomo Kenyatta’s Kenya African National Union. The transition to multipartyism did not alleviate this. As Makau Mutua (1994) argues, despite the formal shift, the Kenyan government continued to operate much like a single-party state, suppressing dissent and violating human rights—a legacy that persists. Mutua attributes this enduring authoritarianism to the retention of repressive colonial-era laws and institutions, particularly a constitution that empowers an autocratic presidency. He highlights several laws restricting speech and political participation, such as detention laws, advocating for their repeal. Furthermore, the nature of Kenyan politics contributes to what are often termed “ethnic clashes.” Jacqueline Klopp (Klopp, 2001) argues that these are not spontaneous tribal conflicts but rather a calculated strategy by the ruling regime to maintain power. This weaponization of ethnicity occurs within a framework of “decentralized despotism” (Klopp, p. 475), where local power dynamics are exploited to serve the central state. Within this politically charged environment, public universities, reliant on state funding, became instruments of the state apparatus, fostering an atmosphere of suspicion and self-censorship among academics wary of criticizing the government. In this context, artists like Gregory Maloba, operating within a relatively stable economic environment, often turned to private practice, catering for the interests of patrons who generally did not seek politically charged or critical artwork.

Like Kenya, prior to independence, Tanzania did not have formal art training institutions for professional African artists. However, learners will examine institutions like the Tanga School, Ifunda Technical College, and Butimba Teachers’ Training College which offered art programs as part of their curricula from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, respectively (Makukula, 2019). They will interrogate the works of emerging Tanzanian modernists who, like their Kenyan counterparts, often sought training at Uganda’s Makerere Art School. It was not until after independence that the Tanzanian government established art departments at Butimba Teachers Training College and the University of Dar es Salaam. Sam Ntiro, a Makerere Art School graduate and faculty member, made substantial contributions to Tanzanian modernist art by setting up an art department at the University of Dar es Salaam and developing a systematic art training program. From 1967 to the 1980s, this project benefited from the socialist state policy of Ujamaa (familyhood/brotherhood)—a state ideology promoting national cohesion through equality and self-reliance, Ujamaa na Kujitegemea. this course challenges the traditional Western-centric narrative of art history various art forms, including music, theatre, poetry, and visual arts, the art school joined other state institutions in producing artists and artworks employed to educate the public about Ujamaa and its principles of self-reliance and communal living. Put simply,

It could of course be argued that this arrangement undermined the autonomy of artists, limiting their ability to raise critical voices through oppositional art, as was the case in Uganda. However, it will also be interesting to assess how such politicization created opportunities through state-sponsored projects and individual engagement with Ujamaa philosophy, placing creative processes at the heart of the government’s agenda of promoting local culture through the arts. As demonstrated in Module 3, the link between policy and art-making in Tanzania fostered a modernist environment in the following ways: first, formal art schools developed alongside existing traditions like Makonde art, while new styles like TingaTinga and Mashetani painting emerged under the patronage of Ujamaa’s socio-political influence. This political patronage, absent in other East African nations, facilitated the state’s funding of institutions to produce and market Tanzanian art, effectively linking creative processes to the global art circuit. Secondly, while the Chama Cha Mapinduzi party continued the legacy of Julius Nyerere’s single-party state, Tanzania’s Newspaper Act of 1976 lacked explicit restrictions on humorous and satirical expression. This relative openness allowed cartoonists and editors to critique corruption, infidelity, and irresponsibility within the government. Consequently, Tanzanian modernism, unlike Ugandan art of the same period, did not develop a distinctly oppositional character.

The history of art in Uganda has some unique characteristics but its contours resonate in Kenya, Malawi, Sudan, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe (Sanyal, 2000).

This Module expands on this discussion of interconnected, but individual, artistic endeavors through carefully chosen artists and their oeuvres. From Tanzania the works of Sam Ntiro, Elias Jengo, and George Lilanga are examined to illustrate their contributions to Tanzanian modernism, both within and beyond formal art schools. Similarly, George Kyeyune explores these two tendencies through the works of Theresa Musoke, Sanaa Gateja, and Jak Katarikawe. Muhunyo Maina presents four artists: Gregory Maloba and Elimo Njau, central figures in Kenyan modernism, alongside Elkana Ong’esa and Rosemary Karuga, situating them within the broader East African art scene. Through these artists, Maina explores the development of Eastern African modernism, highlighting the influences of colonialism, independence, and cultural identity. He delves into their individual journeys, examining their unique styles, inspirations, and contributions, while also considering their connections, relationships, and shared and divergent experiences. 

Mifta Zeleke presents six Ethiopian modernist artists to illuminate their individual and shared contributions to the evolution of Ethiopian art. Afework Tekle, representing the first generation, blends Pan-Africanism with local traditions. Skunder Boghossian, also a panAfricanist and part of the first generation, created works reflecting the complexities of being an African in the diaspora (Giorgis, 2004). Gebre Kristos Desta challenged Western modernism, while Zerihun Yetmgeta, Tebebe Tarffa, and Wosene Kosrof explored hybridity and unique visual languages.

Conclusion 

This course demonstrates that East African modernism encompasses diverse artistic expressions, emerging from a complex interplay of local traditions, colonial influences, and the pursuit of national identities. The artists, artworks, institutions, and experiences examined manifest a strong sense of interconnectedness between individual and community identity, echoing the Kenyan Philosopher John Samuel Mbiti’s aphorism, “I am because we are, and because we are therefore I am.”

By sharing this discourse with a global audience in an online course, the scholars, institutions, and artists involved, spanning four East African countries and multiple generations, demonstrate a shared commitment to documenting and sharing a modernism whose national and regional identity are integral to shaping an East African modernism. Further research into this artistic landscape promises to enrich our understanding of East African modernism’s enduring legacy and its ongoing contribution to global creative discourse. 

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