Crime of the West’ stalks Kenya as oil paintings vanish
PHOTO | FILE Veteran artist Sane Wadu (right) whose two paintings went
missing last year. Another painting was sold for Sh1.3 million at an
auction in Nairobi last November.
NATION
The alleged theft of two oil paintings
by a Kenyan artist whose work recently sold for more than one million
shillings has turned attention to a crime usually associated with
developeountries.
The Sunday Nation has
pieced together the sequence of events surrounding the alleged theft of
Sane Wadu’s two paintings – New York 9/11 and Shall we crucify him?
The
paintings are said to have gone missing sometime after January 13, last
year, when Ghanaian collector Osei Kofi, the managing director of
Nairobi’s now-defunct Gallery Watatu, flew home to Geneva, Switzerland.
Mr
Kofi is alleged to have left the two large paintings in the safe
keeping of a Ms Peninah, the proprietor of a guest house near the
Village Market mall in Gigiri, and then told Mr Wadu where the paintings
were.
The arrangement was that Mr Kofi’s driver,
Stephen Kimani, would deliver the paintings to Mr Wadu’s home in
Naivasha or take them to Mr Wanyu Brush, Mr Wadu’s trusted friend who
lives in Ngecha village in Limuru.
When the paintings
were not delivered to either man, Mr Wadu says he called Mr Kimani
periodically between February and November, last year and that the
driver always assured him that the works would be delivered soon.
He
says it was only in November when he finally offered to pay for petrol
for the round trip from Nairobi to Naivasha that Mr Kimani told the
veteran artist the paintings were lost.
Mr Wadu
immediately went to Central Police Station in Nairobi where he was
referred to the Gigiri Police Station under whose jurisdiction the guest
house falls. Since then, officers from the Directorate of Criminal
Investigations are said to be trying to locate the paintings.
Mr
Wadu told the Sunday Nation that he took out newspaper advertisements
asking for public support to find the paintings because he felt his case
had stalled.
This move seems to have been met with
some success because on Thursday, a day after the first advertisement
appeared, Mr Wadu said the police called him to meet both Ms Peninah,
the owner of the guest house, and Mr Kimani, Mr Kofi’s driver.
KEPT PROMISE
Ms
Peninah recorded a statement at Gigiri Police Station in which she says
the driver took the paintings from the guest house last August. She
said she felt her promise to Mr Kofi to keep the paintings safely had
been fulfilled until that point.
Mr Kimani admitted
during questioning by police that he took the paintings from the guest
house to his home in Ruiru for safekeeping. It was after that that the
paintings are said to have disappeared in unclear circumstances.
At
the meeting with detectives, Mr Wadu, who was accompanied by his wife
Eunice and fellow artist Wanyu Brush, said the driver and the
businesswoman maintained their innocence. Police investigations
continue.
In the meantime, Mr Wadu said he hopes that
if the paintings have been sold, the new owners will hear about the
theft and return them to him.
The disappearance of the
paintings could be a sign of the growing interest in Kenyan contemporary
art, especially Wadu’s work, as well as the awareness that it is worth
money.
An auction of Kenyan art last November organised by the Circle Art Agency made a record Sh18.5 million in sales.
Mr
Wadu, a veteran of the Kenyan art scene who began selling his work
through Gallery Watatu in the 1980s, did especially well. His six-panel
“World Trade Centre” sold for Sh1.3 million.
Work by
Adrian Nduma sold at a private sale in 2012 for Sh2.2 million, while a
piece by Mr Brush (Mr Wadu’s mentor) sold for Sh2 million at Gallery
Watatu in 2011.
While still very low by international
standards, the prices of works by sought-after Kenyan artists like Sane
Wadu continue to rise.
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