Kamal Shah
Incantations #3
About the SessionNAIROBI – Following their successful collaboration in 2025, Strauss & Co, Africa’s leading auction house, and Danda Jaroljmek, Director of Art Auction East Africa, will present Art Auction East Africa | Strauss & Co, a 67-lot sale bringing together modern and contemporary art from East Africa and the wider continent. The live-virtual sale will be held at Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi on Wednesday, 28 October, 2026, 7pm EAT. The catalogue spans a diversity of East African countries, including Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda, alongside works by artists from Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique and Nigeria. Works on paper, photography and sculpture complements the strong painting consignment. “The selection invites collectors to discover East Africa’s diverse modernist histories, particularly those beyond the Anglophone world,” says Susie Goodman. “In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in East African modernists, with artists associated with the Khartoum School shown in museums and fairs globally. Our work as an auction house rooted in Africa is ensuring this rediscovery is not temporary. We are delighted to partner with Danda Jaroljmek in cultivating a sustainable secondary market for East African modernists active during the era of decolonisation and independence.” A preview exhibition will be held at Circle Art Gallery, Victoria Square, Riara Road, Nairobi, during the two weeks preceding the auction on Wednesday, 28 October 2026.
LOT 41
Kamal Shah
Incantations #3
About this Item
signed and dated '09; signed, inscribed with artist's name and medium on the stretcher, signed, inscribed with the artist's name, the title and medium on a label adhered to the reverse
Provenance
The Artist's Collection.
Notes
The present lot is an instinctive exploration of colour, form and gesture. The work is part of an ongoing series by Kamal Shah that explores how the act of painting can evoke the personal, reaching inward and expressing what is beyond the visible.
Born in Kenya, Kamal Shah studied English Literature and Fine Art followed by a postgraduate diploma in Textile Design at Leeds University in the UK. In the early 1980s Shah was curator at the Rowland Ward Gallery in Nairobi, and a founding member and art-director of Kichaka, a multimedia workshop specialising in the printing of avant-garde African textiles. Since the mid-nineties, when Shah became a full-time artist, his paintings and mixed media works have drawn on his African, Asian and European upbringing, using motifs and references from across these cultures, often creating work that is spiritual in content or quality.
Shah is a renowned and popular artist in Nairobi; he has exhibited regularly in Nairobi, Copenhagen, Mumbai, Goa and London, including a group show entitled Sanctuary, Home Away, The Common Ground at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS University, London in 2014. He undertakes many commissions in Kenya and his work can be found in a number of corporate collections, such as Commercial Bank of Africa and the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport.
Biography courtesy of Circle Art Gallery.
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