Stephen Kasumba
Birds in Wilderness
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 61
Stephen Kasumba
Birds in Wilderness
About this Item
signed
Provenance
Private Collection.
Notes
Stephen Kasumba studied at Kyambogo University, Kampala, and later at the Margaret Trowell School of Fine Arts, where he completed his postgraduate study in Fine Art.
Kasumba’s lusciously colourful paintings often play with subverting pictorial conventions as a way to create modern images, inspired by Buganda legends and traditions.
Kasumba has exhibited locally and internationally. In the early 1990s he won an art prize which sent him to France where he met the German artist Matthias Koerner with whom he held joint exhibitions, including at the Kampala Sheraton Hotel in 1996 and in Cottbus, Germany the same year. In 2001 he participated in the Thupelo artist workshop and exhibition in South Africa in 2001.
Biography courtesy of Circle Art Gallery.
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