This painting was acquired directly from Raphael Mutulikwa, an acknowledged master in Zambia. Mutulikwa, who was born in 1964, is repeatedly shown and widely respected. The collector discovered Mutulikwa when he first saw “Clay Pots,” also domiciled in the Roduza Collection, hanging in a remote wall of the Henry Tayali Gallery in Lusaka, radiating an intensity of composition and style that was clearly the work of a master. The work was vaguely reminiscent of Giorgio Morandi’s still lifes, but it had been executed from a point of view wholly alien to the collector. Clay Pots II was made in a more realistic style but has the poetic intensity of Clay Pots I, the reason the collector felt the paintings belong together.
