Presented for the first time to the audience in the MACTE halls, the work Untitled (1996–2001) by Mozambican artist Malangatana Ngwenya appears as a large painting composed by several combinable parts. The work becomes part of the MACTE collection, after it was painted by the artist in Termoli, at the Galleria Civica where it was exhibited in 1996, on the occasion of Archetyp’Art, a show curated by Antonio Picariello in collaboration with FRAC Île de la Réunion, that was opening a dialogue among six Italian and six African artists, as the production of the works happened directly in Termoli.

Malangana requests to have prepared some semi-circular crowning architectonical panels, which he paints on the spot in several days, and which recall the finials of Western sacred altarpieces. The depicted scenes are characterized by a dense and dynamic composition, that offers a perspective of African representation of bodies and colours.

Malangatana Ngwenya (1936–2011) was a poet, activist, and visual artist, a central figure in the Mozambican artistic and political scene. It is considered one of the pioneers of African Modernism, for the way in which his drawings and paintings are mixing the visual language of Western cubism with Mozambican vernacular iconography. His production was focused on themes related to Mozambique’s cultural identity, as witnesses of the conditions of violence, hunger, and death during the country’s struggle for independence—gained in 1975—and in the post-colonial period, marked by the civil war (1977–92). In 1971, Malangatana wins a scholarship at the Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon, to study printing and ceramics in Portugal. During a career that lasted fifty years, his work was shown in museums and galleries in Mozambique and Portugal, and in other countries such as Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, Chile, Brazil, Angola, Cuba, United States, India and Italy.