La roue qui tourne Painting by Ntota

Daniel Ntontolo known as Ntota, is almost the age of the Poto-Poto school of painting, he was born in 1950 in Bacongo (Brazzaville). He spent his first years at school in Loudima then in Louingui with his uncle.
When the latter died, he successively attended the Protestant school of Bacongo and that of Mantsimou (after the Pont du Djoué),
Due to a lack of support, he was unable to continue his studies; he went to the village of Mafoussi to be with his maternal family, then to Moulenda where his paternal family resided. Completely idle, he farmed the countryside, then devoted himself to hunting and fishing. he draws everywhere, especially on the walls of his cousin's shop. One day a client noticed his gifts and advised him to return to Brazzaville to attend a drawing school. But not knowing who to contact, he helps a relative sell a few items at the market.

In 1969, he met a former colleague from the Bacongo school: the latter told him about the Poto-poto painting school. But Guy Leon Filla no longer taught drawing there. it nevertheless appears under the roof of the famous hut on the Moungali roundabout. Zigoma welcomes him. Ombala and Crispin had preceded him. It starts with the most rudimentary equipment: the notebook and the pencil. Zigoma follows him. he then moved on to gouache, after several months of testing, he sold a selection of gouaches: then moved on to oil painting.

Little by little Ntota asserts his personality. Being so young, he astonished by the vigor of his brushstroke, the science of colors, he was first haunted by the memories of the village and his wanderings through the bush, we find among his first paintings the following subjects: "After the rain in the forest", "The rat trapped", "The peanut field", " The mother and her twins", he assumes the past by dealing with traditional subjects; "Fetish mask", "Dance mask", "Bakota mask". For the twentieth anniversary of the Poto-Poto school in 1972, he participated in two exhibitions of Poto-Poto painters. One takes place at the French cultural center in Brazzaville, the other at the French cultural center in Kinshasa. During these exhibitions, Ntota received a lot of encouragement from visitors who saw him as a great budding painter.

Marcel Gotene, returning from Aubusson, will be impressed by the quality of his art. Ntota excels in the figurative style as much as in the abstract style; he sometimes creates bold compositions, all in colors and plans, relating to a sort of constructivist abstraction. This is the case of the painting entitled "The chef's cabin" (1974). The man is confused with his decor and the whole breaks up into distinct elements, which require a kind of autonomy accentuated by the differences in color and the diversification of the plans. In the center of the painting, it is the ground with fire, a large pipe springs from a wall, everything else expresses the opulence of the great dignitary. He uses so...

• Nationality: CONGO - BRAZZAVILLE
• Date of birth : 1950
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Artists.contemporary.cg