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Keith Haring started his artistic career success in the New York underground, when he made generously stylised graphics on blank billboards. Meanwhile, his characters adorn T-shirts, stationery and coffee cups. Already before Haring's graffiti-style originated, just such striking paintings were made in South East Africa - from lack of money usually applied directly to floor tiles with car paint.

Naive animal portraits or rural scenes pictured the so-called "square painters" (based on linoleum floorboards). This spontaneous painting stile functions at the same time as a medium as well as an intermediary between the contemporary world and the ancestral world. Unfortunately, this "narrative Metamorphoses" were soon marketed as souvenir art.

Only a few painters have managed to establish themselves as an independent artist. George Lilanga whose roots definitely are grounded in this folk art, has developed his own individual, visual language from it and is today ranked as the most significant artist in Tanzania.

"Lilanga's world", is shown at the Gallery ZAK in the Königstraße and presented nationwide as the first exhibition of the African. In the USA and Japan the "graffiti painter" has already celebrated international success.

Hermaphrodites

Born in 1942, Lilanga came in touch early with the wood carving craft in the family business and trained as wood carver. The tradition of Makonde woodcarving influenced him greatly in his later art: Again and again, the puckish hybrid, the human, animal and spirit in one (Shetani figures), are imaginatively combined on the canvas. Lilanga's paintings have no titles. The lively scenario speaks strongly for itself.

Many of his goblins make us laugh. So in one of his paintings a seemingly "blind hare" with big ears is being badly in the ropes, or his long limbs remind us of crutches. Arms support, lift, hold, - embrace the next standing figure. Bodies seem to flow into each other: a strong gesture of communication. The artist reduces his powerful coloured creatures until only the pure expression remains: eyes, ears and one toothed mouth monotonate in their over-subscription to icons. If a face is particularly bad, you see it immediately. On the eight square plates as on the large-scale canvases, Lilanga’s vocabulary remains the same. He emphatically repeats himself.

Comical little people

His comical little people hang out in front of a cohesive and atmospheric gradient. The flat figures are given depth. A stronger black outline drawing acts, comically.

The covering made out of household paint or acrylic looks light and flexible, the effect of the paint application is emversized through the kind of painting surface used. Materiality or perspective plays no role in Lilanga’s illustrations. The environments as well as attributes of the characters are shortcut like complemented, but they remain decorative style elements.

The colourful story, the often over subscribed fairy tale is an essential part of African culture. Lilanga’s images are not anything else: colours as well as form are telling stories - provided you understand their symbolism. So many of the images will inevitably seem a little bit strange. But isn’t it the secrets that make life exciting and interesting?