The Africas of Pancho GuedesAn African Collection

Alongside the traditional art of masks and other ritual artefacts found in Dori and Amâncio Guedes’ collection (objects which most collections dedicated to Africa usually focus upon and which document a relatively distant historical and tribal past, both primitive and lost), there are also pieces from the so-called plastic arts that signalled the beginning of the continent’s artistic modernity (from the 50s, at the time of the first independences). An exceptional set of 17 paintings by Malangatana from between 1959 and 1961 (the beginning of the artist’s career) is the most impressive expression of this part of the collection. However, the exhibition "The Africas of Pancho Guedes" also includes expressions of folk art that boast new forms of original creativity that are a response to the changes to traditional societies and geared towards urban markets, in particular the sculpture originating from the outskirts of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo). The collection also includes objects that are everyday, socially prestigious, current and widespread, combining functional demands with the creation of distinctive forms of different cultures and regions, the most common examples being stools and head rests that are sometimes used as pillows.

(Foto Rosa Pomar)

The diversity of the different nuclei of the collection, seen in contiguity, challenges the boundaries between genres and respective hierarchies, illustrating the multiplicity and simultaneousness of practices in a lively and ever-changing Africa and, in this case, from a decisive moment of common history: the decades of the 1950s and 1960s. After having travelled and expanded in the various domestic environments of its owners (Lourenço Marques, Johannesburg, Lisbon), this collection also permits the dialogue or

conflict between the varied relationships established between the different and the exotic, the traditional and the modern; at the same time there is a questioning of the value attributed to ancient works and reactions to the new, while providing the erudite approach of the anthropologist or art historian and the sensitive eye that is more interested in forms, or in the harmony between function and form, even if the location or culture of origin is unknown. What is on show ranges from "tribal art" (which was formerly known as negro art and primitive art, which some now call primary arts or les arts premiers) to folk art, which is intended for urban consumption, including situations where there is a coexistence or a transition between local traditions and artistic techniques of Western influence, with particular focus on what was created by amateurs and outsider artists. “It is all folk art”, says Pancho Guedes.

The growth of the collection has accompanied the intense working life of architect and teacher Pancho Guedes in Mozambique and later in South Africa, and bears witness to his constant interest in the dialogue with other forms of expression. The objects he collected, as he himself has stated, helped him free himself “from the dominant Eurocentric view of the white man who lives in the lands of others” (In Pancho Guedes, Vitruvius Mozambicanus, Berardo Museum Collection, 2009, pg. 165.). In other more common situations, the selection of objects by the collector, with its own criteria of attributing value and distinction, is a possessive exercise of Eurocentrism. Unlike those specialised or systematic collections (the ones amassed in Europe and from antiques’ markets), this is an African collection experienced in Africa that recalls past journeys, of circumstances and personal encounters; one made up of personal choices with certain acquisitions made in the field and also with a subtly erudite and attentive eye on the varied offer of fair vendors. It is a collection that draws from the Mbali cemeteries in the deserts of South West Angola to Nigeria’s town squares and their Yoruba diviners, and direct contact with Lomwe and Makua peoples, which are the source of both the extremely rare bark cloth sapwood masks and the personal stools that the men transported with them on bicycles.

(Foto David Crofoot)

This is a plural and diverse collection; a collection of collections, but one that is especially an unusual and idiosyncratic assortment associated with the creative activity of an architect with countless projects built in Africa, who is also both a painter and sculptor (as widely demonstrated by the exhibition of his work held at Lisbon’s CCB/Berardo Collection Museum in 2009). In addition to this (and this is something rarely mentioned), Pancho Guedes is also internationally renowned as one of the main patrons and promoters of contemporary African art in a decisive decade; that of the independence from many ex-colonies. He was in close dialogue with important figures, such as Frank McEwen in Salisbury/Harare (the organiser of the First International Congress of African Culture, in 1962), and Ulli Beier (founder of the Mbari Club and the magazine Black Orpheus, in Ibadan, Nigeria).

The exhibition area is divided into the gallery for the visual arts and the itinerary of tribal and/or folk art objects. On the lateral walkways of the Santa Clara Market, visitors can immediately see masks boasting the unique theatrical characteristics of the Lomwe and Makonde, with particular emphasis on two ancient and rare Nyau masks from Mozambique, whose naturalism indicates a very clear aesthetic direction that differs from the condensed and abstract orientation that interested the 20th-century vanguards. Mbali funerary art from Angola, however, is a specific case of acculturation and of folk art. Bronze art and gold trafficking in ancient Nigeria are found in versions collected there during the years of the country’s independence, and in the field of ritual objects, the rarely seen dolls from South-western Angola, which are also toys, are highlighted. The Makonde sculptures document moments of transition within an ethnic group (essentially made up of farmers and artists) that has long been identified for its artistic production, with the figures of the two venerable couples, as well as the colonial-style illustrations being unique examples.

The area dedicated to the display of artistic processes and formats of European influence (eg. painting on canvas) boasts a plural forum where artists of Portuguese origin and the first trained or untrained local painters co-exist, rubbing shoulders with sculptural practices that boast strong ties with tradition. Alongside Malangatana are the other Africans who Pancho Guedes took to the Congress of 1962 (together for the first time since that period), as well as other painters involved in a situation that was affected by the impasses of the colonial war. Erudite or locally trained artists, known or unknown – the different works are worthy in themselves and for the fact that hey have been collected by Dori and Pancho Guedes.

Among the most original objects, there is embroidery done by men from Lourenço Marques/Maputo, originating from a recent tradition already lost and now unknown, and the unique case of the painter Tito Zungu, whose first solo exhibition was presented by Pancho Guedes in 1982, and whose work was part of South Africa’s official representation at the Venice Biennial in 1993. These

are the Africas, the various Africas we find here and are able to see at close quarters, and not some limited idea of the many local differences and multiple relationships that can be established. Alexandre Pomar