Auguste MAMBOUR (1896-1968) ‘Maternité africaine’ Imposing oil on canvas, signed.

Lot 202 - Auguste MAMBOUR (1896-1968) ‘Maternité africaine’ Imposing oil on canvas, signed. A gifted draughtsman and, above all, portraitist, who set up as an advertising and decorating agent in the aftermath of the Great War, he already had a solid reputation, as much for his disturbing pride as for his shocking canvases. In revolt against impressionism, academicism and even realism, he very quickly moved from a cross-hatched fauvist period to a passionate expressionism. After winning the Second Prix de Rome in 1922, Auguste Mambour decided, contrary to the usual practice of going to Italy or Greece, to learn Negro art and spent six months in the Congo... in order to rediscover a ‘primitivism of which the Western world had lost all trace’ (1923). He would not paint the Congolese landscape any more than he had painted the Walloon landscape. He painted only the most everyday gestures, as well as heads and busts. From a private collection, normal wear.