Prof Gregory Paul Maloba

In 1962, the artist and academic Gregory Maloba appeared in an interview for the Transition – a literary magazine first published in Kampala in 1961 by a Ugandan of Indian origin named Rajat Neogy (interviewer). In that interview, he talked about his evolution from his childhood fascination with modelling in clay to international recognition as a sculptor. Conducted roughly 25 years after he had joined the School of Fine Art at a Makerere as a student, the interview was particularly a revelation of how it all began:

“It is all terribly simple. I was always very interested in using my hands . . . in enjoying the production of an image with a feeling of solidity about it.” 

It’s eerie then, to unpack his path to stardom within the artworld and academia. Maloba was born in Mumias, Western Kenya in 1922. His father, who Maloba occasionally referenced in interviews, was a carpenter. Born into the Luhya community where pottery was a cultural as well as an economic activity, most children, Maloba included, were exposed to modelling in clay while young. 

‘This was not just peculiar to me,’ he stated: ‘most children at home had this traditional way of using clay or mud to fashion objects in a sculptural way.’ But what separated him from his peers was what he described as “my interests just happened to be greater than theirs.” 

Growing up, Maloba was no stranger to criticism from his parents, especially his father, for habitually dirtying his hands while modelling in clay. Despite his fathers warning, at 14 years old, when he left for high school (A-levels), that modelling wouldn’t get him anywhere in life and that he should focus on his studies, he kept this artistic spark alive.

Up until that stage in his life, Maloba had been inspired by religious iconography – the Catholic Plaster Saints, which were the only sculptural objects he had seen a photograph of. Indeed, like Jak Katarikawe’s disbelief upon discovering that the paintings of Jesus at the church he attended in Rushoroza were man-made, hardly would Maloba believe that the Catholic Plaster Saints were crafted by human hands.  

At St. Mary High School Yala, Brother Morris, then the principal of the school discovered, in 1938, Maloba’s statuette of the Virgin which the artist had sculpted and carried it with him before he left home for high school. Maloba used to keep it under his pillow, as he revealed, ‘for protection’. Within the brief period of discovering Maloba’s modelled Virgin, Brother Borriss announced his talent in front of a school parade, stating that ‘people should not conceal their skills.’ 

Ensuingly, he would be relieved of any manual work at school so as to focus on modelling and would soon be joined by a handful of other boys who were equally interested in modelling. Maloba’s model of an Army Commander’s dearest bull, Terrier – upon his request, was particularly compelling and subsequently provided the platform for what he alluded to as his ‘first commissions.’ And to mark the end of the term, Maloba’s virtuosic talents were on display across several models exhibited as part of school activities.

In addition to the various accolades he received at school from visitors, he won a scholarship to enrol for secondary classes. And while he continued to display impressive mastery through his work, the principal hadn’t quite figured out what to do with him as his studies drew to a close. Remarkably, around this period, the school hosted Sir Henry Monck-Mason Moore, Governor of Kenya between 1940 and 1944. At the behest of the principal, Maloba’s works were on display to grace the occasion. 

Accompanying Sir Henry was his wife Lady Moore – an artist and alumnus of Slade School of Fine Art, London. She was particularly awestruck by the young sculptor’s elegant artworks. Subsequently, the power couple procured a scholarship for the Kenyan maestro to pursue formal art education under Margaret Trowell – another alumnus of Slade and pioneer of the The Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Art (MTSIFA), Makerere University, Uganda.

“Sir Moore wrote to Margaret Trowell asking her to admit Maloba to the Art School. He suggested that Maloba needed help because he showed great skill although his work was ‘crude and unimaginative stuff’ informed by ‘photographs in some ecclesiastical catalogue.”

Maloba’s Sculptures & Life at Makerere

One of Maloba’s best-known works under Trowell was Death, 1941, a “…half-human-half-animal allegorical figure,” slightly above half a metre in height, with rugged surface and carved out of Grovilia tree. The mythological figure is seen grasping a human figure under its arms as if suffocating him. Conceptualised under Trowell’s non-rigid pedagogical approach that often emphasised Afrikan cultural authenticity in artmaking, in African Tapestry, 1957, Trowell explained the evolution of the sculpture as follows:

“First I suggested he might start by saying Death, using a well seasoned tree trunk from the garden. For some weeks nothing happened, and I began to think he had forgotten, when one day he came to me with a smile all over his face. ‘I know now what I want to say about Death; I want to say it isn’t unkind, but you just can’t help it.’ I sent him off to say it with his log and adze, and soon he was well away with what I still believe is his best carving.”

A voracious reader and curious student, Maloba was looking through Trowell’s library while she was away, when Jacob Epstein’s ‘illustrated biography’ caught his attention. The Day and Night sculpture modelled by Jewish-American sculptor from London was particularly eye-opening for Maloba. It’s no coincidence that some similarities can be drawn between Eptein’s Day and Night, 1929 and Maloba’s Death, 1941. However, asked about the sculpture’s influence on his conceptualisation of Death, Maloba dismissed its influence as follows:

“No, I thought of traditional dancers at a funeral. They danced to the same tunes as those of rejoicing. So I thought Death is very powerful, more powerful than humans, but not more than God. It was a queer elementary philosophical feeling.”

But while Jacob Epstein’s Day and Night as well as a host of other sculptures did upset the public due to their prevalent erotic appeal, Maloba’s Death delighted its viewers.

Fast Forward – Death No Longer Bears Its Horns

Reference to the current state of the Sculpture as displayed at The Uganda Museum of Kampala is unavoidable at this juncture. Notably and quite unfortunate, visitors might find their experience of the iconic work altered as it no longer bears the two horns initially curved by the artist. It was partly-destroyed in 2019, during the installation of Leonardo Opera Omnia at the museum when certain sculptures, Death included, had to be put away to accommodate the exhibition. 

Amidst this significant alteration of a historic piece of work are Italian organisers adamant about mending the sculpture. Thus leading to critics terming the act as discriminatory and perhaps even racist especially since the Italian organisers privileged the memory of the Italian artist and legend Leornado Da Vinci (whose legacy we all share internationally) at the expense of the East African legend, Gregory Maloba.

Posting on X, Derek R Peterson,  a Professor of History and African Studies, University of Michigan, was the first to summon the attention of the Italians stating:

“On behalf of all who love the Uganda Museum, I call on @massi_mazzanti to fund the restoration of Walumbe, a foundational work on Uganda’s art. The work was damaged during the installation of #LeonardoOperaOmnia, and the Italians have not yet agreed to repair it.”

To this end, zero if any interventions have been made by Italian correspondents to mend the artwork.

Back at Makerere

Away from the recent exhibitionary maleficence, the 40s exemplified a Maloba keen on tackling charged political themes through his artworks.  Works such as The Hunter, 1941 and The Beggar, 1944, bear evidence of his astuteness at that. Yet Trowell is said to have discouraged her students from addressing political themes in their work especially after anti-colonial sentiment started gaining traction among students which ruffled the colonial government. Crucially, Maloba’s works were not political in the sense that they galvanised or swayed political opinion. Rather through them, Maloba took part in an ongoing political debate.

Despite creating the aforementioned masterpieces from wood, modelling rather than curving, gave him the unrestricted freedom to reveal himself as a formidable sculptor: “I cannot say what I feel,” he reasoned, “or think when I model. The work speaks for itself. I have done it. A good piece of sculpture is an expression of Life.” 

Since joining the school in 1940, the artist and academic was the first professional art student that Trowell claimed to have mentored. It’s no surprise that she would, in 1942, appoint him as a student-teacher to help her handle the scores of students that had begun filling up art classes. Nonetheless, Maloba did not like his role as a teacher, especially since he had to bear the brunt of teaching people much older than him.

But his feelings of disenchantment aside, Maloba would graduate from Makerere with a degree in fine art in 1946 – a school he had evolved with since its institution into the Makerere college system by Margaret Trowell and even after Trowell left. Afterwards, he’d pursue further studies in fine art abroad – graduating from Manchester University as well as the Royal College of Art, London.

Maloba The Academic

Unlike artists such as Sam Ntiro and Elimo Njau who wholly embraced Trowell’s value system of confining their artmaking within a philosophy that espoused a true Afrikan identity, Maloba found himself increasingly receptive to Western art influences. And it’s this exposure to European art through Trowell’s library that also informed his flexible approach to pedagogy, art and identity.

For Maloba, Trowell’s pedagogical approach did not align with the hallmark of his philosophical thinking where, as Onyinye Zakuani puts it, “observation drawing and anatomy and knowledge of the wider world were essential components that modern African artists ought to be in their grasp.”

His openness to outside influences in art pedagogy led him into heavily criticising his student and later, in 1948, his colleague, Sam Ntiro, Trowell’s faithful disciple. ‘…Gregory Maloba,’ Onyinye Zakuani writes, ‘described him [Sam Ntiro] as a naïve painter and his naiveté was not to be interfered with, otherwise, his art would be shattered instead of improving.’ 

Maloba’s criticism of Sam Ntiro notwithstanding, the roll call of Kenyan artists who passed through his (Maloba) hands include Geraldine Robarts, Elkana Ong’esa, and Gakunju Kaigwa. The latter two artists being maestros in the art of sculpting while the former evolving into a brilliant contemporary painter.

“….when the word tradition is used. Then one wonders! Many of us East Africans, born and grown on East African soil, feel fully qualified to state frankly that this clamour after a traditional East African culture could do more harm than good; for the simple reason that it is a clamour which is superficial, it is a clamour which disrupts and confuses.”

These words were uttered by Maloba in 1965 at an Arts and Craft Conference in Kampala as the debate on the adoption of European models of art training at Makerere art school under Cecil Todd in 1962, got heated. The new pedagogy was something akin to a British model of training art students – “academic dogma grounded in colour theory, drawing and Western art history”.

Uttered 8 years since Trowell left, one could argue that Maloba appeared to err towards Todd’s radical reforms in Makerere’s art pedagogy. However, even in his role as an art lecturer at Makerere, he was not entirely dismissive of the concept of a pristine Afrikan consciousness in learning and art production. Consequently, he is said to have provided his students a well-balanced curriculum where ‘both the African consciousness and the studio academic inquiry were addressed.’ 

In a phrase: for Maloba, it was better to be open to exploring other cultures’ lived experience and invite learning than to confine yourself to your native cultural experience and risk the consequent blindness.

Serving as the head of the sculpture department in Makerere’s art school, Maloba would, in 1966, leave for the University of Nairobi (UoN), Kenya – his native motherland. Here, together with three others they would establish the Department of Design and Fine Art.

Design and Fine Art were at their nascent stages in Kenya. Selby Mvusi, a South African painter and anti-apartheid activist who had been exiled in the US before relocating to Kenya is often credited with initiating the establishment, in 1967, of the department of Fine art and Design. Proven as essential to manufacturing and other trade-related industries elsewhere, design was especially favoured and even the first to be considered for offer as an undergraduate course in the University of Nairobi. 

However, and rather unfortunately, Mvusi’s life was tragically cut short in 1967 through a road accident before implementing his vision for the department. Taking over the operations of the department as its first chair in 1967, Maloba attempted to drive it towards Fine Art given his background as a sculptor and art professor. He was also the Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Development.

The department would witness some upheaval before officially opening its doors to students in 1968. But the ensuing paucity of understanding of the differences between design and fine art among students and to an extent by the lecturers led to confusion and misdirection. The conceptualisation of Design and Art as a single academic department only served to complicate matters. 

So, to solve this, the Department of Fine Art was established as a standalone department in 1972 and subsequently moved to Kenyatta university with Maloba as its head. Formerly a Teacher’s Training College, Kenyatta University had been, within the same year, reconstituted into a college of the University of Nairobi. 

Accompanying Maloba to Kenyatta was Terry Hirst – a British illustrator, former full-time teacher at the Kenya High School and part-time lecturer-turned full-time lecturer. Hirst who had also, in 1965, co-founded Paa ya Paa Art Gallery with Elimo Njau proposed a series of changes to the Art curriculum which Maloba frequently disagreed with. “The lousiest? Hirst stated in an interview: 

“Well, the new art teacher training course that I had introduced at Kenyatta College was bitterly criticized by both the successful international artists, Sam Ntiro at Makerere and Gregory Maloba at Nairobi University, who thought it had departed too far from the British art school ‘model’ they had enjoyed and favoured – the ‘farce’ of training people to be artists, and then expecting them only to teach, whether they have a vocation or not – and it was quickly abandoned after I had left.”

With the 70s drawing to a close and most the expatriate staff the University of Nairobi and Kenyatta University left, Maloba maintained his leader of the Fine Department at KU