Nairobi gallery holds first retrospective of overlooked East African modernist Msangi

Circle Art Gallery in Nairobi has opened the first-ever retrospective devoted to Kiure Francis Msangi (1937–2003), a Tanzanian-born painter, printmaker, calligrapher and educator whom the gallery describes as a foundational figure of modern East African art but one whose work has rarely been shown.

The exhibition, titled "Kiure Francis Msangi: From Makerere to Stanford and the Nairobi Years," opened on 9 September 2026 and runs until 10 October 2026 in the gallery's main space, Circle Art Gallery One, according to the gallery. It sits alongside a dual show of paintings and prints by contemporary Nairobi artists James Kagima and Dennis Muraguri in the gallery's second room, Circle Art Gallery Two, also running 9 September to 10 October.

"Although widely respected during his lifetime as an artist and educator, opportunities to experience Msangi's work have remained remarkably rare," Circle Art Gallery said in its exhibition notes, framing the show as an attempt to introduce his contribution to new audiences. Africa Art News, reviewing the exhibition, called it "an act of rediscovery," noting that Msangi's public profile has grown in the past year on the back of record prices at auction.

From Makerere to Stanford

Msangi trained first at Mpwapwa Teachers' College in Tanzania before studying art and education at Makerere University in neighbouring Uganda, where he was awarded the Trowell Prize and completed a BFA and Diploma in Education in 1964, according to Circle Art Gallery. He later moved to the United States, earning a BFA in Graphic Design from the California College of Art and Craft in San Francisco in 1975, a master's degree in Art Education with distinction in 1977, and a Doctor of Education from Stanford University in 1987.

He returned to East Africa and taught at Kenyatta University in Nairobi from 1986 until his death in 2003 — the "Nairobi years" of the exhibition's title. Over a four-decade career he worked across painting, printmaking, graphic design, illustration and calligraphy, and wrote two art-education texts, Art in East Africa (1972) and Art Handbook for Schools (1975), as well as illustrating the children's book Samaki Mdogo Mweusi (1981). His work is held in the collections of Stanford University and San Jose State University, and was once owned by the American poet Maya Angelou, according to the gallery.

Africa Art News described his output as marked by "a distinctly human focus," with portraits, landscapes and everyday scenes that engaged with identity, justice, migration and nationhood in post-independence East Africa.

Interest in Msangi has been building since the inaugural Art Auction East Africa, a collaboration between the Nairobi auction platform and the South African auction house Strauss & Co, held on 5 November 2025. His 1968 painting Baobab Under the Red Moon sold for KES 3,522,000 (about US$27,271, based on the auction house's own conversion) after a six-minute bidding contest, more than double its pre-sale estimate and the top price of the night, according to Strauss & Co. Another work, Lusiki, sold for KES 1.6 million after five minutes of bidding.

A contemporary pairing

The second gallery space pairs two living Nairobi artists working in very different registers. James Kagima, born in 1998, studied architecture before turning to pencil portraiture and mixed media through the Safari Mentoring Arts Program; his work explores masculinity and what Africa Art News called "black boy culture" through subjects drawn from sport, dance, fashion and daily life. He has also founded a sustainability-focused denim label, Nairobi Nnoize.

Dennis Muraguri, born in 1980 in Naivasha and a resident artist at Kuona Trust Art Centre in Nairobi since 2005, is known for woodcut prints of the capital's matatu minibuses, a visual language he traces to childhood years spent watching vehicles come and go from a matatu park below his family's flat. He also works in sculpture, using recycled wood and metal. Africa Art News described his prints as treating the matatu as "a moving surface on which Nairobi expresses its humour, aspirations, anxieties and visual energy."

Circle Art Gallery, which opened its first premises in Nairobi in 2015 after being founded as an arts agency in 2012–13 by Danda Jaroljmek, Arvind Vohora and Fiona Fox, moved to its current two-room venue at Victoria Square on Riara Road in Lavington in 2023, its tenth anniversary year.

Visiting the exhibition

Circle Art Gallery is open weekdays from 10am to 5pm and weekends from noon to 5pm, and is closed on public holidays, according to the gallery's published hours; visits outside those times can be booked by appointment on +254 (0)790 289991. The gallery's exhibition listing does not state an entry fee.

Circle Art Gallery is also due to host the 2026 edition of Art Auction East Africa on 28 October 2026, shortly after the Msangi retrospective closes, with Msangi again among the featured artists alongside fellow Tanzanian Edward Saidi Tingatinga and works from seven countries, according to the auction's website — a sign that the market rediscovery the Nairobi show reflects is set to continue.