Wilson Lukenge, who died in 2025, was a gifted modernist of Uganda who successfully sought to break away from established visual languages. He was a remarkably consistent artist with a unique visual style, immortalized in the recurring figure of the mysterious Nabutono. The Luganda word refers to a petite woman, and Lukenge, in a vast body of work spanning five decades, ultimately came to realize that Nabutono embodied almost everything the artist wanted to say about existence. Educated in the 1960s at Makerere University’s Margaret Trowell School of Industrial and Fine Arts, Lukenge later taught art at high schools including Makerere College School and Ntare School. Much of Lukenge’s work is touched with genius, even though he died with a reputation not nearly as equal to his talent.
