The Lives of Gabriel Matshitolo: Art and Memory in 20th Century Congo

Dainese, Deborah (2026) The Lives of Gabriel Matshitolo: Art and Memory in 20th Century Congo. Doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia.

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Abstract

This thesis explores the lives of the Congolese artist Gabriel Matshitolo, contextualising his work within the intertwined histories of Catholic evangelisation, Belgian colonialism, as well as local practices in the Kwango Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo during the mid-20th century. Within this context, the thesis examines how modern artistic practice emerged through processes of artistic negotiation and cultural translation. It argues that Congolese modernism developed through the interaction of colonial institutions, Christian patronage and Indigenous artistic knowledge, and that Gabriel Matshitolo’s career exemplifies these historically specific forms of African modernism.

Beginning with the serendipitous discovery of his misspelled name in a Vatican exhibition catalogue from 1950, the thesis connects fragments of Gabriel Matshitolo gathered from across archives, museums and oral histories in Europe, the Americas and Africa. Drawing on art historical and anthropological approaches, it presents a biography, treating absence and silence as fertile spaces for reimagination.

Taking inspiration from Giorgio Vasari’s ‘The Lives’ and Saidiya Hartman’s ‘critical fabulation’ (2008: 11), this thesis attempts to narrate the lives of Gabriel Matshitolo beyond the constraints of colonial and missionary documentation. By focusing its narrative around Gabriel Matshitolo as an artist, it stretches the Vasarian biographical paradigm to create a versatile ‘space of correlation’ (Fromont, 2014: 15), in which aspects of Gabriel Matshitolo’s lives can be explored. In doing so, the thesis demonstrates how biography can serve as a decolonising method for recovering artistic agency and rethinking the place of Congolese artists within Twentieth-century African modernism.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of History
Depositing User:	Chris White
Date Deposited:	15 Oct 2026 10:00
Last Modified:	15 Oct 2026 10:00
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/104784
DOI:

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