Joseph Ntensibe (Uganda 1953-)
Couple carrying baskets

oil on canvas

Artwork date: 2007
Signature details: signed and dated bottom right
Exchange Rates*: USD 19001.55 – 24430.57
EURO 17267.78 – 22201.43
GBP 14531.85 – 18683.80

(1)

169 x 119.5 x 2.5 cm

Provenance:

Private collection, Minnesota, U.S.A.

Acquired directly from the artist.

ABOUT THE ARTWORK

Joseph Ntensibe’s distinctive visual language blends figuration and abstraction to explore the delicate and shifting relationship between humans and the natural world.

In the vibrant, Couple (2007) – featuring a man and woman carrying goods through a forested landscape – the artist evokes a deep-rooted harmony between community and environment. The stylised figures emerge from a fragmented background of cool greens and faceted colour planes, suggesting both the density of tropical vegetation and the layered complexity of daily life in rural Uganda.

In the later, 2021, luminous landscape, Abstract forest, Ntensibe's exploration of abstraction becomes more pronounced, as colour and form dissolve into dreamlike impressions of forest canopies; a possible reference to memory, loss, and change. Here, the outlines of trees lean into a gestural and less literal representation – signalling a shift not only in technique but in tone. Where earlier works often brimmed with vitality and close-knit detail, this composition feels more spacious, even vulnerable, reflecting the artist’s evolving engagement with memory, place and environmental decline.

Having grown up immersed in Uganda’s dense forests, Ntensibe paints not only from observation but from the recollection of a landscape that has changed dramatically within his lifetime. Over the past two decades, Uganda has lost more than a million hectares of virgin forest – close to 30% of the country’s total land to mining, agriculture, and rapid urbanisation. Across both figurative and abstract works, he captures the fragile beauty of an environment and a way of life that are increasingly at risk; threatened by deforestation, climate change, and urbanization. In his layered compositions he subtly reflects the quiet erosion of once-thriving ecosystems, and the communities that depend on them.

COLLECTOR'S NOTE:

• Recently, in March 2025, Aspire Art achieved R 924,200 for Joseph Ntensibe’s Forest scene, setting a new South African auction record for the artist.
• In 2020, Aspire, in collaboration with PIASA, presented the large-scale Tropical Garden 4 (2019) at auction in Paris. The painting sold for more than double its high estimate at an impressive €67,600, the second-highest price achieved at auction for Ntensibe’s work at the time.
• The current auction record for Ntensibe at auction is $172,372 for Tropical Garden 2, sold in Paris in 2019.