Known for his portrait of Nelson Mandela titled ‘Tears of Freedom’, Leonard Kateete was first noticed in 1972 after presenting a mosaic of President Idi Amin to State House. This led to him joining the school of fine art at Makerere University in 1973, but because of his perceived closeness to the regime, was forced to flee Uganda in 1980, after the fall of Idi Amin. He has since spent most of his life in Kenya.
Nation Media Group commissioned Kateete to create a series of paintings of the local communities of Kenya in 1995. 24 of his oil paintings are now on display at the National Museums of Kenya.
Kateete’s work is reminiscent of a series of watercolors of traditional peoples of Kenya by Joy Adamson, but is distinctive in the oversized hands and feet of his subjects, making his work quite recognizable.
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