Written by Wolfgang Jaenicke | 14 August 2018
This week we hand over the metaphorical pen to one of our sellers: Wolfgang Jaenicke. He is the man behind this week’s Bloodywood Hand-pained Movie Poster auction, featuring 60 artworks, including works of Mr. Brew, who he met during his travels in Africa. The auction runs from 17th to 26th August 2018. Read on to follow our seller's travels and learn about the works of key witnesses of Ghanaian cinema of the time from 1990 - 2010: Mr. Brew.
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Those who travel through Africa are familiar with the extraordinary poster painting of this continent. In countries where reading and writing are less common, such posters serve as visual aids. Just take one looks at the mural in front of a pub, a "Chapalo" whose wall painting invites patrons to sample the legendary millet beer to know what I mean. We journeyed to Ghana to meet with one of the key witnesses of Ghanaian cinema of the time from 1990 - 2010: Mr. Brew.
It was in Gaoua - in the land of the Lobi, southern Burkina Faso - where I noticed this contemporary "street art" of Africa for the first time. Painted by artists who hardly anyone knows. Artists who have "no claim", but do have an amazing feeling for composition, coloring and a high degree of recognition value. Everything that can be found in galleries and museums in the west can be spotted on every street corner in Africa.
Photo: Wolfgang Stäbler: Sea View Kino in Elmina, Ghana
A peculiarity of this street art however, are the paintings that served the countless small cinemas in Ghana's capital Accra, Takoradi or Elmina as movie posters. The collector Wolfgang Stäbler recently sent me a historical photo showing one of the establishments where those films were shown, often made with the simplest equipment.
On the wall of the shed entrance, you can see announcement of the movie "Candidates for Hell", painted by the legendary Mr. Brew. While the veterans Leonardo, Awall Sunil Shetty, Papa Warsti and Armahsco are now well documented in well-known private and museum collections, Mr. Brew was previously the "blind spot", the artist who everyone collector of this genre knew, but so far was not to be found. Again and again he had promised to give an interview, but again and again he had not appeared.
On Friday we wanted to drive from Lomé to Accra specifically to meet Mr. Brew after contact with his middleman. We found him after a long search in the border region to the Ivory Coast by Baba Syllas with intensive help from an antique dealer from Nima Market in Accra.
Mr. Brew had promised us - as many previously - to come to Accra for an interview. But we weren’t sure it would actually happen. Two days later, he actually came to Accra to meet with us. We sat in a backyard with Mr. Brew in Accra-Nima, a neighbourhood with the most diverse cultural ethnic groups in West Africa.
The poster painter Samuel (Samu ..) Brew, called "Mr. Brew "
We arranged to meet for the next day in his studio near the beach. The studio consisted of a small 1.2 square metre shack that reminded me a bit of a mobile closet that served to store the painting utensils. Three of the windowless walls served as "easels" on which three pictures arose simultaneously. On the fourth side of Mr. Brew's "painting house" (studio) was the door, which could be closed with a curved nail. "I'm well known here...nothing has ever been stolen, even if there are unfinished pictures left hanging on the walls of the hut overnight."
At the "painting house" of Mr. Brew, three posters are created simultaneously
The cinema in Accra for which Mr. Brew worked as a painter was closed in 2010 and has now collapsed. It has been eight years since a historically significant institution "sank" and was replaced by other media such as computers, mobile phones and flat screens. The cinema, which still has significance in the west today, will probably never be back in Africa. A cinema was a cultural meeting place which had an important social function. Like a theatre, it was a social hotspot and in its specific aura of a "dark, magical cave" in the modern media there has been no equivalent.
On one hand, the legendary Mr. Brew, with his film posters painted on flour sacks, has become a trademark in Western galleries. On the other hand, one does not even know his first name, knows absolutely nothing about his biography, knows nothing about his concrete social environment, although the man, now 45, is one of the key witnesses of Ghanaian cinema of the time from 1990 - 2010. Of course - like all street art artists of West Africa - he is self-taught.
In his early 20s Mr. Brew was one of Ghana's most sought after movie poster painters. As the era of small urban cinemas and traveling cinemas in Ghana approached the end, he faced career decline, depression and a two-year prison sentence for complicity in stealing a laptop. After one and a half years he was was released due to good behaviour and today he continues to work in his profession. But times have become difficult. Printed posters and blockbuster movies from Hollywood have found their way into Accra.
The situation with these poster painters is comparable to the art of many African carvers, whose sculptures and masks are indeed collected and for many decades in our museums, but hardly anyone knows about their biography and valuation is based solely on western provenance criteria: who in the west previously owned the object. These are the criteria under which the art market explores the provenance and what inclined art historians and anthropologists provide those adapted gold frames that the market prefers.
Left: 'The Prophet', Ghanaian movie poster by Mr. Brew. Right: 'Naked Weapon' movie poster by Mr. Brew.
For the African artist himself, unfortunately so much as no one cares. "Mr. Brew" is an almost classic example. We only know his "western brand name", which alone is enough to make "usable art" out of it. It's only a matter of time until his art scores high prices at major international auction houses with significant western provenances. But until then, what constitutes the "essential provenance" and focuses on the artist himself and represents his social context, will be largely lost.
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Visit our special Bloodywood Original Ghanian Movie Posters auction to find beautiful and unique works by Mr. Brew and other artists.
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