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An excellent impression of the diversity and originality of contemporary Kenyan art gives the exhibition "Art from Kenya", which opened at the weekend in the gallery ZAK. No tribal art and cheesy airport art that is offered to tourists en masse in the gift shops of the East African country is here presented. The works rather are a testimony of the excellent workmanship and individualism of the Kenyan art scene, which neither in substance nor in style is committing itself to one direction.

In addition to the internationally renowned "old masters" from Kenya the Fürth-based doctor and Africa art collector Bernd Kleine-Gunk, who brought the exhibition to Fürth, has also included the experimental work by young artists. Joel Oswaggo undoubtedly belongs to the old masters, who in carefully crafted crayon drawings are showing the village life in Kenya and its traditional culture. Although there are images of a still intact world, Oswaggo waives all glorifying or romanticising view. He shows the by malnutrition bloated bellies of the children as well as the painful rituals of this culture. In their distinctive features heavily oversubscribed, his figures somehow are getting caricatures but never ridiculed. Oswaggos pictures are an impressive document of a world threatened by destruction.

A very different side of the Kenyan reality shows Richard Onyango, a "Shooting-Star" of the regional art scene, who made furore with exhibitions in New York, Paris and Venice. In an earlier series of paintings Onyango came to terms with his relationship to a wealthy English woman, Dr. Souzy Drosie, who met him in a bar in Malindi and took him spontaneously as her lover. Dominated in these works, the rich white woman with her opulent corpulence the picture so has the self-confidence of the artist changed considerably in his recent works.

In "Rape of Europa" he is no longer the little hired Negro in the background, but Zeus in the shape of a great white bull, which carries the kidnapped Europa / Miss Drosie. The exhibition makes the change in Onyango's self-view clear by combining two of his new surrealist paintings with one work from his old Miss Drosie cycle.

 In contrast to Onyango's voluptuous shapes are the Massai-pictures of the artist Mahe. Mostly summarised in groups and extremely stylised, radiate the faceless figures right away something of the order of the strict traditionalism and the pride of the East African nomadic people. The sublime expression is enhanced by the colour choice. When Mahe puts his bright red-robed groups of people against a brown or bright blue background, he creates an almost sacred atmosphere.

Archaic charm

Similarly reduced in the shape are the faded human figures of Munjau Jaa, which seem like two-dimensional images of the rod-shaped figures of the sculptor Alberto Giacometti. Jaa applies colour - mostly pastel shades - with his fingers and is scratching with little sticks structures into the pictured slim wicker and wooden beams carriers. This technique gives his paintings a rough archaic charm.

A colourful, naive picture cosmos is unfolded by the young Kenyan artist Joseph Juma. His shepherds, fishermen and animals have strange traits and tell fantastic stories of African life. A visual language, that is far away from the intellectual Western painting.

The leather paintings by Mainga seem like Tattoos. He dabbed the paint with very delicate brushstrokes directly onto the brown surface.  The spatial impact is entirely omitted. The figures remain all on one level, overlap themselves and climb on top of each other. The result is a work of highly ornamental character.

"Modern Times" is the title of three pictures by Nairobi-based artist Sachin. The whole canvas is filled with small, abstract shapes in bright, loud colours. Reduced to tiny strokes, people seem almost slide through between these forms. Sachin's work is a critical commentary on the overwhelming chaos of city life, in which man increasingly goes under. They also might have been painted in Berlin, Paris or London. They certainly are the most western pictures of the exhibition.