The paintings that Irma Stern executed during her Congo period (1942-1955) are amongst her most outstanding examples of colour, form, expression and iconography. Stern travelled to the Congo in 1942, 1946 and again in 1955. Her travels were onerous journeys made by train, boat and car extending to Lake Kivu near the border between the Congo and Rwanda. Stern’s primary interest in travelling to the Congo was to paint the Watussi and Mangbetu, the two dominant ethnic groups residing in the Congo. The Watussi were attributed with a regal status whereas the Mangbetu were perceived to be musicians and skilled craftspeople. In her publication Congo (1943) published by van
Schaik, Stern makes reference to both the Watussi and Mangbetu.
Mangbetu Girl (1942) was painted on Stern’s first trip to the Congo together with Mangbetu Chief’s Daughter (1942) and Mangbetu woman carrying fruit (1942). Reflecting Stern’s vital expressionist painterly style, Mangbetu Girl depicts a deep green background contrasted with tangerine orange flowers, worn by the figure as adornment. Her conical raffia headdress evokes the Mangbetu act of wrapping children’s heads in long elongated shapes, representing a form of beauty. Mangbetu Girl exemplifies Stern’s robust painterly style and exuberant use of colour. As Neville Dubow comments, “She produced a body of painting of extraordinary vigour and decorative control”. As one of only a select number of Congo portraits, Mangbetu Girl embodies Stern’s efficacy at portraiture. Stern’s tonal palette has shifted to a more mercurial range of hues, resulting in an arresting depiction of a young Mangbetu woman. In this way, Stern’s visceral painterly style, captures not only the outer attributes of the young woman, but also her interiority as she gazes aside, caught in her own world.
Mangbetu Girl is illustrated in the retrospective exhibition catalogue, Expressions of a Journey (2003) that was held at the Standard Bank Gallery. It is likely that the painting was exhibited on Stern’s solo exhibition held at the Musée Ethnographique in Elizabethville (Lubumbashi) in the Congo in 1942 where she sold 11 paintings. Thereafter, the remaining paintings, drawings and gouaches were returned to South Africa where Stern exhibited in Cape Town and Johannesburg at Gainsbourgh Galleries in December 1942.
In 1927, Stern won the Prix d’Honneur at the Bordeaux International Exhibition and received the Regional Peggy Guggenheim International Art Prize in 1960. Stern represented South Africa at the Venice Biennale in 1950 and 1958 and apart from numerous private collections, her works are held in museum collections including: The Iziko South African National Gallery, the Orientalist Museum in Qatar and the Musée Nationale d’Art Moderne at the Centre Pompidou.
