Sam Joseph Ntiro

Sam Joseph Ntiro (1923–1993) was born into a farming family near Kilimanjaro. He trained as an artist at Makerere College in Uganda from 1944 to 1948 and studied at the Slade School in London from 1952 to 1956. He then returned to Makerere, where he taught painting from 1956 to 1961 and briefly headed the school in 1958. In 1960 a travel grant took him to the United States; he had a solo exhibition in New York, and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) acquired one of his paintings for its collection. From 1961 to 1964 he was High Commissioner of Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania) in the United Kingdom. From 1965 to 1967 he taught at Chang’ombe Teachers’ College in the Dar es Salaam region, while also heading the art department at Kyambogo Teachers’ College in Kampala, Uganda, and chairing the East African Society of Artists. From 1967 to 1973 he was Commissioner for Culture in the Tanzanian government, and from 1969 to 1983 he taught at the University of Dar es Salaam, where in 1975 he initiated the creation of the art department.