Born in 1956 in Kinto M'Vuila, Democratic Republic of Congo
Lives and works in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo Chéri Samba was born in 1956 in Kinto M'Vuila, Democratic Republic of Congo. In 1972 he moved to Kinshasa, the capital, where he earned his living as a painter of advertising signs while making comic strips for his magazine Bilenge Info. Three years later, he transposed his comic strips onto canvas, thus inaugurating bubble painting. He portrays facts of society, morals, sexuality, disease, social inequalities, corruption, etc., and quickly achieved great local popularity. The whole of Kinshasa now knows Chéri Samba, the great master of popular painting.
From the end of the 1980s, he himself became a commentator at the heart of his paintings so that "people would know me not only by name but also by face like a television news presenter". For him art has no borders. His most recent paintings deal with world news. They are always painted in a rich, vivid, contrasting and most often glittery chromatic palette as if to play down the subject so that the viewer can penetrate them without apprehension and even find them beautiful whatever the message.