Rabesahala Coco
Malagasy Musicians
Oil on canvas
The large format evokes the dimensions associated with history painting. The painting represents the habits and customs of the Malagasy culture. Two musicians attract the attention of a family of two children on the left and of a farmer with his zebu cow on the right. Their traditional Malagasy costume is composed by colorful cotton or silk clothes called lamba. The musicians like the famer belong to the Betsileos populations who lived in the southern part of the central lands of Madagascar, also represented by the French painter Lucien Lièvre (1878 - 1936), Grand Prix of Madagascar in 1931.Read more
Coco Rabesahala’s painting recalls of the Pop Art screen printing process of serigraphy used during the 1960s. The painter simplified the volumes in flat surfaces of colors. He painted the forest and then the characters in successive layers of paint. The visual entanglement caused by the pictural treatment of the textile fabrics and of the flora in the background evokes the rhythmic of the violin and the drum.
Private collection
Our artwork available
93400 Saint-Ouen sur Seine