(Kalifala SIDIBE)
LE CORBUSIER & Roland DORGELES & Georges HUISMAN
Kalifala Sidibé peintre soudanais
[Galerie Georges Bernheim], Paris s.d. (1929), 11,5x15cm, broché.
Kalifala Sidibé peintre soudanais
[Soudanese painter][Galerie Georges Bernheim] | Paris [1929] | 11.5 x 15 cm | original wrappers
First edition of an extraordinarily rare Georges Bernheim Gallery catalogue for the Kalifala Sidibé exhibition, Malian painter, considered the first African painter on canvas, the precursor of modern African Art.Texts by Roland Dorgelès, Le Corbusier and Georges Huisman, cover illustrated with a photograph of the painter in his village.
This catalogue of the first Kalifala Sidibé exhibition, who went on to tour Europe, was thought to have been lost until now, and of the fifty or so paintings produced, only two are currently listed at the Fondation Le Corbusier and in the collection of Michael Graham-Stewart.
The exhibition of this young African painter at the Galerie Georges Bernheim from 15 September to 3 October 1929 had considerable impact in the art world and beyond in Parisian society. Kalifala Sidibé's works were then exhibited in several well-known galleries including Alfred Flechtheim in Berlin, the Neue Galerie in Vienna and the Gummesons Konsthall in Stockholm.
Around ten years earlier, Apollinaire and Paul Guillaume had already shaken things up with regard to how «negro art» was viewed, until then restricted to a more or less aesthetic ethnographic expression. The rise of African statuary to the rank of work of art overturned the European ethnocentric conception. However, these tribal sculptures retained a specific status in the eyes of the spectator: they were not derived from artistic will. If in 1929 Europe recognised the existence of African art, it remained art without an artist, as did Roman art before Giotto.
From the very first lines, Roland Dorgelès describes Kalifala Sidibé as an «authentic» African painter, contradicting these «blacks in jackets,» whose artistic talent, according to the mentality of the time, came from their westernization. Amongst them, the African-Americans Henry O. Tanner and Palmer Hayden, or the Nigerian Aina Onabolu are respected painters, «those evolved with ebony skin» who «if [Dorgelès] treated them as negros would be offended.»
Kalifala Sidibé «on the contrary is pure Sudanese, the unmixed negro who eats yams, reveres crocodiles and dries meat on the roof of his hut.» His work does not result from a loan from the West but from his own apprehension of the world and his instinctive desire to «copy nature.» Implicitly comparing the tribal arts from Africa with European medieval art,
Dorgelès raises Kalifala to the status of an African Giotto, the first artist of an art that is no longer primitive.This announced African Renaissance is, in France, based only on this artist who stayed in his village on the banks of the Niger. Visitors to the exhibition will only see photographs of the painter sitting cross-legged in front of his canvas, surrounded by almost naked children and a woman carrying her baby on her back while an earlier canvas is drying on the straw roof of the hut. This exoticism worthy of the stereotypes of the ethnographic Trocadéro museum will incidentally cause more ink to flow than the paintings themselves.
Since, as in 1916 during the exhibition of black sculptures next to works by Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani, what is at stake with the Sidibé exhibition is less the discovery of an exceptional painter, but rather the deliberately inflammatory assertion of the universality of Art and, furthermore, of its immanence: «six centuries apart and under different skies, it is the wonderful story of Giotto that is renewed.» The political and ethical consequence of this observation calls into question the racial hierarchy and the paternalist colonial system.
A similar artistic adventure took place the same year in Belgium with the Con
golese artist Albert Lubaki, discovered by Georges Thiry and exhibited at the Palais des Beaux-arts in Brussels in September-October 1929. However, the European remains at the origin of artistic production since it is Georges Thiry, the young Belgian colonial manager and curator of the exhibition who, having discovered in 1926 the frescos on Lubaki's huts, encouraged him to work on paper and guided him in his new creations (as their long correspondence before the exhibition testifies). Paradoxically, this white intervention, although heavily criticised, ensures black work is well-received in colonist Europe: Lubaki's work serves to demonstrate the «emancipatory benefits» of Belgian colonisation. With the help of Gaston-Denys Périer, Thiry will repeat his experience in 1931 with the works of two other hut painters, Djilatendo et Antoinette Lubaki. The skilful Périer and Thiry then promote an «living negro art» under colonial rule by praising: «the potential of the natives evolving under our administration.» «The authenticity» put forward by Lubaki then becomes a simple commercial argument, assuming its share of exotic construction: «With your approval, Lubaki will be a negro from Africa, one hundred per cent negro, as we say today» (Carlo Rim, «Lubaki, peintre nègre», in
Jazz n° 11).
The Kalifala Sidibé exhibition that takes place concurrently in Paris does not lend itself to this distortion. Here, the «purity» of the artist's Africanness is an essential element of his presentation, as evidenced in the countless press articles. «This Senegalese painter is a true Senegalese» (
Paris-Midi, Tuesday 15 Oct. 1929), «He is a negro, an authentic negro» (
Comœdia, Thursday 24 October 1929), «authentic negro, who lives on the banks of the Niger» (
Le Quotidien, 16 Oct. 1929), «an authentic and primitive negro» (
Vu, n° 84, 23 Oct. 1929).
In this respect, the history (or perhaps
the legend) of Kalifala Sidibé's «instinctive» discovery of his art in a cotton factory, thanks to the pieces of cotton and the paints used for numbering the bags – discrete concession to the collateral «benefits» of the colonisation – contributes to the building of a founding myth of an «autonomous» Renaissance of African art. What is more, this artistic independence is part of the avant-gardist movement of western art as noted, cuttingly, by a journalist from the weekly
La Revue: «If we press Kalifala Sidibé to make him say where his talent comes from, he answers it seems: 'It is the Devil who makes it like that...' Less realist than surrealist, this negro believes in the magic of art. He is in agreement with many 'advanced' critics.» A barely disguised reference to the subversive clique led by André Breton.
Not only does Kalifala Sidibé open Africa to art – in its modern sense – but to its most contemporary expression. In the midst of the developing Naïve Art, Surrealism and soon Art Brut, this Giotto of the Banks of the Niger innocently affirms independence of the black man toward the highest expression of the human spirit.Exciting the imaginations, this «natural» birth of an artistic vocation within the African bush explains in part the media unrest around this unknown artist.
From the
Annales Coloniales to
Paris-Soir, the exhibition is relayed by nearly all of the daily newspapers and many journalists turn themselves into art critics to unleash their dislike with regard to modern art on this ideal scapegoat, Le Douanier-Rousseau at the head, and the so-called «negrophilia» of the artistic elite. «Kalifala is a kind of black Rousseau, with the difference that the customs officer dreamed of imitating the Louvres' paintings, whereas he only thinks of imitating nature. This, it seems to me, is a quality. Alas! I am afraid that we are going to make him lose it soon! We have already, in a way, spoiled a merchant of fried potatoes, a workhand and a cleaning lady whose works make the fortune of the sellers.»
The article by René-Jean in the magazine
Comœdia from 24 October 1929 is, without doubt, the most emblematic of the terrible challenge of this extra-western modern painting:
«If we glorify this negro, it is because it is difficult to bring his painting to the pinnacle. Painting...the word maybe excessive in the sense that we give it in general. Kalifala Sidibé's paintings are large colored images [...] without flexibility or nuances. Some Abyssinian manuscripts show us quite similar friezes with their characters which follow those of Kalifala Sidibé.»
Despite this analysis that he wanted to be definitive, René-Jean, an esteemed art critic, devotes no less than seven columns to this exhibition of an artist whom he judges so severely. And it is with a lot of classic and modern French artists that he attempts to reject the idea of African art. Delacroix, Puvis de Chavannes, Poussin, Watteau, Corot, Daumier, Baudelaire, Rabelais, La fontaine, Voltaire, Racine, Mozart, Renoir, Courbet, Cézanne, Vlaminck, Matisse, Houdon, were all called on in this one article to nip the inconceivable claim of the African continent in the bud. And René-Jean to refuse Africa until the representation of itself: «[The eighteenth century] has not ignored the Black Race. If it did not seek masters to glorify from its own, it borrowed certain examples that it took as models. At its two extremes, Watteau as well as Houdon [...] created more spiritual examples just like those of Mr Kalifala. Dare we say that they are less true? This would not be flattering for black-skinned men.»
he violence of the words is only equalled by the earthquake this exhibition caused, calling into question the self-proclaimed supremacy of the white race.If several critics, with Le Corbusier, vouch for Sidibé's unbelievable talent, it is with the temptation of depriving him of this so problematic «authenticity«: «Well! That one there even knows too much! It is not the ingenuity of his mixture of colors that charms us. His striped cloths are reminiscent of Matisse collections. And then, he has what Western painters have worked for centuries before to acquire: the feeling of what Berenson calls tactile values. Kalifala Sidibé [...] draws without holding back, with the indifference of a «genius.» (In
La Revue hebdomadaire) This undeniable talent is then attributed to the Persians, of whom «we can even wonder if Kalifala Sidibé does not save [a few] images in some corner of his hut.» But it is once again the philosophical and ethical implications more than the painter that are violently denied here: «Is it really 'the need to copy nature' that torments him? And this need, incidentally, is it at the origin of humanity's first artistic expressions?» (In the weekly
La Revue, 9 November 1929).
Whether they are complacent or virulent, the many articles aroused by this exhibition almost all revolve around the artist's black culture, and from there to the so-called «en vogue» negrophilia. In this way, they do not avoid the artistic question, they unconsciously highlight that the real challenge of this exhibition is more political than aesthetic.
«The vogue is for Black» makes fun of Gabriel Joseph Gros on the opening of his
Paris-Midi article. The very preface that Dorgelès devotes to this exhibition opens with a «I like negros» and revolves only around this theme, ostensibly avoiding the question of artistic quality: «Will the name of this stranger become famous? My love of the negros makes me hope so.»
Only Le Corbusier and Michel Leiris grasp the measure of the intrinsic power of Kalifala Sidibé's painting and reveal under political implications, the metaphysical question posed by this reborn art.Le Corbusier in first place, offers a frame of reference in the exhibition catalogue that will not be repeated anywhere in the press of the time and for good reason: he compares Kalifala's painting to a piece of writing, «clearly drawn signs that can be read and, by their positioning, can bring about relations full of interest and meaning.[...] Creating signs represents a power of synthesis and clear views. [...] What about this uncultivated black interests us? He writes pictorially [...] and he reaches something fixed, definitive: these are paintings and they are neither modern nor old.» By this refusal to include Sidibé's work in the continuity of tribal art, Le Corbusier does not measure the artist by his black culture, but by the universal concept of Art.
This concept is shared by the young Michel Leiris who, in
Documents n° 6, stigmatises «the scale of arbitrary value» established by «the white race» and the «purity of style that obsesses so many minds.» One year before his journey to Africa, the Kalifala Sidibé exhibition gives the future author of
L'Afrique fantôme a thought that «would influence his ethnological research that refused the old interpretation or the schematic and simple stylisation of African arts» (Yanagisawa Fumiaki,
La Naissance du tableau en Afrique noire: Kalifala Sidibé et l'«
art nègre»)
Despite criticism, this first exhibition is a success and will be followed by several others in Germany, then in Stockholm, without us knowing exactly how many works were presented and sold.
A year later, when a new exhibition of his canvases was opening at the Galerie Gerbo in Paris, Kalifala Sidibé, barely thirty years old, dies, allegedly «seized by the debauchery» resulting from his European success (
Comœdia, 23 November 1930). His talent was then recognised by all and his works were acquired by collectors across Europe. But his untimely demise brings an end to this very first African modern art adventure.
The Galerie Bernheim exhibition catalogue, a fragile brochure bringing together three great writers, was, until now, considered lost like the majority of his works produced and mentioned in the European exhibition catalogues. Today only two known paintings remain: in the Michael Graham-Stewart gallery in London and at the Le Corbusier foundation. There are other paintings, all signed in Arabic, only a few black and white testimonies from the period.
We can reasonably question the surprising concealment of the history of this artist's art, who was granted the honour of the most prestigious modern art galleries of the early twentieth century, centres of artistic avant-garde: The Georges Bernheim gallery in Paris where Bonnard, Vuillard, Cézanne, Seurat, van Dongen, Matisse, Le Douanier Rousseau, Dufy, Vlaminck, Modigliani and Utrillo in particular where exhibited; the Alfred Flechtheim gallery in Berlin, which featured Picasso, Braque and Derain; the Gummesons Konsthall in Stockholm which exhibited Kandinsky, Klee and Munch very early on and later Andy Warhol; and the Neue Galerie in Vienne. Immortalised by a photograph by Brassaï, a hunting scene acquired by Le Corbusier took centre stage on his desk for a long-time. This canvas is now on display at the Foundation Le Corbusier.
The long study that Yanagisawa Fumiaki, Doctor of Arts at the University of Tokyo, a specialist in African arts in Europe and in modernism in sub-Saharan African culture, devoted to him, highlights «the inextricable internal position towards the reception of black cultures in France at the end of the 1920s,» which, with Kalifala Sidibé's cut-short career and the disappearance of his paintings, partly explains the gradual erasure of the first modern painter in the history of African art!
Yanagisawa Fumiaki, La naissance du tableau en Afrique noire : Kalifala Sidibé et l' « art nègre » (Japanese Society of Aesthetics n° 20, 2016)
Kalifala Sidihé est mort (Comoedia, 23 novembre 1930)
Kalifala Sidibé expose en Allemagne (Comoedia, 14 janvier 1930)
René Chavance : Kalifala Sidibé, Le Raphël noir (La liberté, 19 poct 1929)
Roland Elissa-Rhaïs : Kalifala Sidi bé, peintre soudanais (Les annales coloniales, 17 oct 1929)
réponse à Roland Elissa-Rhaïs (Comoedia, 20 oct 1929)
Les expositions à Paris et ailleurs (Cahiers d'art 1929)
P.F. : les petites expositions (Journal des débats politiques et littéraires, 28 oct 1929)
Michel Leiris : Exposition Kalifala Sidibé (Documents n°6, 1929)
Paul Fierens : Remarques sur l'art d'aujourd'hui (La Revue hebdomadaire, 9 novembre 1929)
René-Jean : Types nègres dans l'art d'aujourd'hui et d'hier (Comoedia, 24 octobre 1929)
Gabriel Joseph Gros : La semaine artistique (Paris-midi, 25 octobre 1929)
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