Tshibumba Kanda Matulu was one of a number of 'genre painters' in the 1970s, in the Katanga region of the Congo, who painted generic images onto flour-sacks and sold them by the side of the road. in 1974 Tshibumba convinced anthropologist Johannes Fabian to support him to paint the history of the region in 100 paintings starting from the ancestral couple, continuing through the arrival of Arab slave-traders to the area, the events of Belgian colonisation, and the anti-colonial struggles of Zaire.