Louis Mbughuni was born in 1938 in Tanzania. He studied fine art at Makere College in Uganda. Although as a student he studied twentieth-century developments in Western art, he was passionate about expressing his African heritage and identity. At college, he often painted alone in his room to avoid being influenced by anyone and developed his unique approach to using colour and abstraction to express his personal responses to the subjects he paints. When Louis Mbughuni was growing up, Tanzania (then called Tanganyika) was under British rule. It gained independence from Britain in 1961 and after unification with Zanzibar was renamed Tanzania. Mbughuni supported the new socialist government and new president of the country [Julius Nyerere](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Nyerere) and served as Director of Arts and Language in the Ministry of Culture for Tanzania. Mbughuni believes that art should serve society and that its ultimate goal should be to help people to both understand the world in which they live and to transform it. Though trained in fine art, Mbughuni's career spanned theatre, literature and cultural policy. He now lives in the United States and is still a practising artist.