Ssengendo lives on through his art

Professor Pilkington Ssengendo died recently, leaving behind a collection of paintings, sculptures and a thriving art school that he helped to shape. Perhaps the most defining legacy of his illustrious career will be the fervour with which he championed the art that celebrated our traditions and culture as Africans, writes Stephen Ssenkaaba.

On Thursday, October 1, visual art in Uganda lost an outstanding advocate and practitioner when Prof. Pilkington Ssengendo, a painter/sculptor and one time dean of the Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts (MTSIFA) at Makerere University, died after a long illness.

The news of Ssengendo’s death may have taken many by surprise; perhaps because he had remained active until fairly recently when he lost his sight.

He was nearly 70 when he got his PhD in fine art from the school that he once headed. Even in retirement, he had remained active as a researcher and consultant at the university.

Like many visual artists that have gone before him, Ssengendo remains alive - largely through his work and the skilled painters, sculptors and illustrators that he trained and inspired.

His legacy is painted all over the visual artscape at Makerere; from the “yellow door” (whose exterior was repainted black) of his former office at the university, to MTSIFA’s thriving departments in jewellery. There are also applied sculpture, ceramics and the school’s other industrial components whose establishment he advocated during his time as the dean.

It is a legacy that needs to be put into proper perspective because, as Dr. George Kyeyune, one of his former students and later colleague at Makerere says, Ssengendo’s work transcended the boundaries of the art studio.

“He did some studio work for sure. But that is not what mostly defined Ssengendo’s legacy as a visual artist,” Kyeyune says.

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The Kyadondo art piece was made in the 1980s
 
The man and his art

Ssengendo’s earliest exposure to visual art may have been at his parents’ home in Mengo where his father, Simeon Nsibambi, a renowned champion of the East African Revival (Balokole) Movement, is said to have been a casual artist. 

But a more personal encounter with the craft happened later during his boyhood years at Makerere College School. It is here, under the tutelage of Elimo Njau, a celebrated Kenyan painter/sculptor, that Ssengendo’s views on art and its practice and role in society took shape.

“In Njau, Ssengendo met a mentor who guided him on a journey of artistic self-discovery,” Kyeyune says.

A former student of Margaret Trowell, the founding head of the Makerere art school, Njau had come to appreciate the need for African artists to reflect their own traditions and culture in their work as Trowell had encouraged her students to do. He would later pass on the same ideas to his students, including Ssengendo.

As a student in Makerere in the early 1960s, Ssengendo sought to do art that reflected indigenous traditions. He embraced a style that fused cultural themes with Western modern techniques.

At a time when the art school, under Trowell’s successor Cecil Todd, emphasised a Western-oriented training approach to African art while undermining indigenous perspectives to it, Ssengendo became the young voice of dissent in a largely conformist academic environment.

“While Todd and some of his colleagues maintained that indigenous culture was not critical to shaping African art practice, Ssengendo insisted that our own traditions had much to offer to modern art practice,” Kyeyune says.

He says Ssengendo argued that as a people, we have got a long and rich history and abundant heritage to draw from; that it was possible to reflect traditional themes using modern art techniques. 

Ssengendo criticised Todd’s time at Makerere as “lacking in the African perspective”. And even though his position was not popular with his teachers, that did not deter his art from following his heart. He also challenged fellow artists to reflect cultural themes in their work.

“Why shouldn’t Ugandan artists be interested in their own culture? If they don’t care about international art, so what?” he told art historian and academic Sydney Kasfir. Ssengendo not only believed in reflecting cultural themes but also in using locally available materials to paint.

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Promoting the Ganda culture

Drawing from his own Ganda culture, Ssengendo painted works that portrayed the ways of his people. In a style that freely explored colour, perspective, intricate lines and cubist patterns, he told the story of a rich and vibrant culture.

His 1960s painting of a man wearing a red chief’s hat and carrying three bunches of Bananas on his bicycle through a lush matooke plantation; his 1980 painting called “Kyadondo”, a reddish- brown tapestry of bold linear and angular patterns and interesting wildlife and cultural symbolic motifs; all served as a testimony to his core belief: That the old and the new in art belong together.

His earlier paintings were no less symbolic than his later ones, and more than 40 years after doing them, works such as Masikini still hold powerful resonance with the current times.

But it was in barkcloth, the smooth, brown cultural fabric from the bark of the Omutuba tree (Ficus Natalensis) that Ssengendo’s expressive prowess thrived most. 

Through paintings such as Landscape in Peace (a 1995 creative simulation of an all brown patched fabric), Ssengendo showed the immense possibilities offered by this beautiful material.

In King and Queen (another of his iconic paintings in which he depicted Kabaka Ronald Mutebi’s 1999 wedding to Sylvia Naginda), he proved its aesthetic and cultural import.

For a man with Ganda aristocrat blood in his veins, Ssengendo’s attachment to his culture and his dedication to preserving it through art was perhaps confusing.

Elevating art at Makerere
Ssengendo helped to raise the profile of fine art at Makerere University when many considered it as a mere vocational discipline. He used his position as Dean and member of the University Council to lobby for the upgrading of the school.

“His advocacy led to the establishment of industrial courses such as design, jewellery, photography, weaving and applied sculpture into the school, resulting into significant growth for the school,” says Prof Philip Kwesiga, the head of the new Department of Visual Communication, Design and Multimedia at Makerere.

In 1995, at the end of Ssengendo’s tenure as dean, MTSIFA got its second PhD graduate since 1973 when a British student John Berry, obtained his doctorate from the school.

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Twenty two years after Berry’s PhD, Andrew Yiga obtained his PhD, thanks to Ssengendo who helped to find funding and supervisors for him. This ignited interest in pursuit for PhDs thereafter. At the school, Ssengendo remained the father figure to his students and staff, sharing not just wisdom but also a joke and some tea. “He was also a good administrator, who nurtured students and supported staff development programmes,” Dr. Maria Kasule Kizito, the dean of the school and one of Ssengendo’s former students, said. 

Prof. Francis Nagenda, a former dean and Ssengendo’s friend, recognises the deceased’s scholarly documentation of visual art in Uganda.

“He wrote a number of articles on art and art practice, many of which have featured in reputable journals. He was a real intellectual,” Nagenda says.

Ssengendo attended and spoke at international conferences and exhibited his work all over the world. Most notably at Africus-Johannesburg-Biennale ‘95 South Africa, Africa 95 UK, Musée Botanique and Belgium.
 Ssengendo may have gone, but through his work, this man will live on.


Ssengendo’s 1960s painting of a man carrying bananas on his bicycle through a lush matooke plantation

Ssengendo at a glance

Born in 1942 to Simeoni and Eva Nsibambi, Ssengendo grew up in Mengo and went to Makerere College School.

He received a diploma in fine art in 1966.

Was once the headteacher of East Kololo Primary School in Kampala.

He later obtained a master’s degree in painting.

Started lecturing at Makerere University in 1983.

Served as the dean of Margret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts from 1989-1995.

He helped in the execution of Kabaka Ronald Mutebi’s monument in Bulange and the Centenary Park monument which now graces the Ugandan currency.

Served on the Uganda Broadcasting Corporation (UBC) board, lObtained his PhD in fine art from Makerere University.