16 May - 29 June
Goodman Gallery London
Atta Kwami
Goodman Gallery London
Atta Kwami
Head-Image
Goodman Gallery is delighted to present Atta Kwami’s first solo show with the gallery since announcing representation of the estate in partnership with Beardsmore Gallery. This exhibition presents a selection of important works made over a period of twenty years, showing the breadth of Kwami’s practice and highlighting the artist as one of the most important African abstract painters of the 20th century. Belatedly recognised, Kwami was awarded the prestigious Maria Lassnig prize in 2021 - honouring artists deserving of greater visibility. The prize resulted in a major mural commission at the Serpentine Gallery and the artist’s first monograph which will be published alongside this exhibition.
Kwami is known for expanding the notions of painting, basing his practice both in the visual world of his native Ghana and in reflections on modernism.
With a career spanning forty years, Kwami was a distinguished artist, art historian and curator, living and working between the UK and his home country, Ghana. His colourful works of vibrant geometric patterns are inspired by a wide range of influences, from Ewe and Asante cloth to jazz, the tradition of mural painting and the design of street kiosks along the roads of West-African towns. Kwami is known for expanding the notions of painting, basing his practice both in the visual world of his native Ghana and in reflections on modernism. He wrote about how his work was ‘described conventionally as “abstract”’ – but, he explained, ‘given that there is a very precise, knowable set of resources at the back of it, I would describe it rather as schematic: not like a map, but like a reaction to or interpretation of a map […] the outcome of a series of engagements between practices, forms and visual environments that are specific to me in Ghana.’
The exhibition showcases work from 1999 to 2021, alongside an abstracted Kiosk structure Money Can’t Buy It (2019) constructed of found wood and conceived of as expanded three-dimensional paintings. The architectural scale work makes reference to the improvised vernacular of Ghanaian street painting. The show expounds on the range of influences on Kwami’s practice including his extensive travel across the African continent.
Atta Kwami
Untitled, ca. 2019
Acrylic on canvas
Work: 236 x 106.5cm (92.9 x 41.9 in.)
Unique
Atta Kwami
Inter-Angle Triangle Dance, 2015
Acrylic on canvas
Work: 79.5 x 59 cm (31.3 x 23.3 in.)
Unique
Atta Kwami
Die Hard (diptych), 1999
Acrylic on canvas
Work: 19 x 40 cm (7.5 x 15.7 in.)
Unique
Included in the show is the untitled painting that forms the foundation of his public mural Dzidzɔ kple amenuveve (Joy and Grace) currently on view at Serpentine in London until September.
Contributing to the growing scholarship on the work of Atta Kwami, Melissa Blanchflower, Senior Curator at Turner Contemporary and editor of the forthcoming monograph, will deliver a talk and walkthrough of the exhibition on the 31st of May at 11:00am.
Atta Kwami, Dzidzɔ kple amenuveve (Joy and Grace), 2021-22. Installation View: Maria Lassnig Prize Mural, Serpentine North Garden, 6 September 2022 – 30 September 2024. Courtesy of the Estate of Atta Kwami. Photo: Hugo Glendinning.
Atta Kwami
Money Can’t Buy It, 2019
Found wood, ccrrugated plastic and acrylic paint
Work: 250 x 246 x 183 cm (98.4 x 96.9 x 72 in.)
Unique
Atta Kwami (b. 1956, Accra, Ghana, d. 2021, UK) studied, and later taught at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). In 2007, Kwami received a PhD in art history, now published as Kumasi Realism, 1951-2007: An African Modernism, in which he sought to explore past and present influences on West African art, with an emphasis on street art traditions throughout Kumasi, Ghana.
In 2021, the year he died, he was awarded the prestigious Maria Lassnig prize, which recognised later career artists deserving wider career recognition, and, in 2022, The Serpentine unveiled the final public mural commission by Kwami, DzidzƆ kple amenuveve (Joy and Grace), which remains on view until September 2024.
This Spring, the Serpentine will publish a monograph edited by Melissa Blanchflower titled Atta Kwami, with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Köln supported by The Maria Lassnig Foundation and marking the first publication dedicated to examining the breadth of Kwami’s singular practice.
Kwami’s work has been exhibited widely, notably creating large-scale public art commissions such as at the Folkestone Triennial in 2021 for which the artist made short-term alien interventions in the landscape. Solo exhibitions include: National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC (1994-1995), SOAS, University College of London (1996), Geometric Organic, National Museum Accra (1998-1999) and Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2001).
Kwami’s work is included in major collections around the world, including the National Museums of Ghana and Kenya; the V&A Museum, London; British Museum, London; the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York.