# Monsengwo Kejwamfi artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/monsengwo-kejwamfi/
Profile generated: 2026-08-24T20:48:08.514Z
Quality: medium confidence, adequate sources

## Artist identity

- Nationality: Congolese
- Movements: Congolese popular painting, Postcolonial Kinshasa urban art
- Common media: Painting, Early landscape pictures on discarded cardboard

## About Monsengwo Kejwamfi

Monsengwo Kejwamfi, better known as Moké, was a Congolese painter born in 1950 in Ibe, Bandundu Province, and active professionally in Kinshasa until his death in 2001. He established a reputation during the 1970s as a leading practitioner of Congolese “popular painting,” an urban, self-taught tradition concerned with everyday experience in the postcolonial city. Moké painted Kinshasa's crowded streets, pedestrians and cars, nightlife, outdoor bars, music performances, political gatherings, and other public scenes. His attention to observed social life was informed in part by documentary photography, while his early practice also reflected the commercial-art environment surrounding billboard and advertising painters. Collectors encounter his work under several recorded names, including Moké, Moke, Mossengo, and Moké Mossengo. Institutional authority records connect these variants to Monsengwo Kejwamfi, making careful identity matching especially important when researching catalogues and auction records.

## Common works and media

Works associated with Moké are primarily paintings centered on modern Kinshasa. Commonly documented subjects include lively streets, pedestrians and traffic, nightlife, outdoor bars, music performances, workers at leisure, crowds, rallies, and public ceremonies. MoMA also records that his earliest pictures included landscapes made on discarded cardboard. Titles, dates, materials, dimensions, inscriptions, signatures, and name variants should be checked against institutional records when identifying a work.

## Market and appraisal context

Moké's market should be assessed work by work rather than through a general price prediction. Relevant comparisons should match the type of painting, support, dimensions, date, subject, condition, attribution, and provenance as closely as the available records permit. Scenes of Kinshasa nightlife, music, streets, crowds, bars, or public events belong to his documented artistic context, while early pictures may involve discarded-cardboard supports. His multiple recorded names also make cataloguing and attribution checks important. Public auction results can provide useful comparison points, but sale date, currency, buyer's-premium treatment, condition, and the degree of similarity between lots must be reviewed before a result is used in an appraisal.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine public artist-identity research with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. Institutional authority records are used to reconcile Moké's alternate names and biographical identity.

## Sources

- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/75467
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500118559
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/96560092/
- IdRef: https://www.idref.fr/081253788
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q16267842
- Appraisily: https://appraisily.com/artist/monsengwo-kejwamfi/