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Article

Adéagbo, Georges  

Beninese, 20th century, male.

Born 1942, in Cotonou.

Installation artist.

Adéagbo formerly studied law in France. On the death of his father, he returned to Benin in 1971. He has not followed the traditional 'head of the family' role by choosing a dependable profession, but rather spends his time creating what the art milieux in the West call installations. He has been sectioned on several occasions at the request of his family. It has taken him several years to be able to assert his way of living....

Article

Agbokou, Félix Nyakpogbé  

Togolese, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 12 February 1977, in Lomé.

Painter (mixed media).

Félix Agbokou studied under Sokey Edoth between 1996 and 1999. He abandoned realism in favour of depicting a fantasy world, and his paintings are spontaneous to the extent that they have no predefined theme. Painted at night and by candlelight, each series of paintings is directly inspired by its immediate surroundings: Lomé, Kouma, Abouri or Ghana. Agbokou uses materials that come readily to hand - leaves of indigenous plants or the bark of local trees - and mixes them with acrylic paint, outlining his forms and individual colours with a black line obtained from a mixture of coconut milk and old nails. His work has featured at group exhibitions, including the ...

Article

Ahouansou, Simplice  

Beninese, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 1964.

Painter (mixed media).

Simplice Ahouansou is self-taught. In a manner that shows affinities with Surrealism, some of his paintings comment with irony on certain aspects of modern Western civilisation, such as communication, or protection of private property, while other works seem more firmly anchored in the artistic traditions of his native country of Benin....

Article

Alexander, Jane  

South African, 20th–21st century, female.

Born 1959, in Johannesburg.

Photomontage artist, sculptor of assemblages, installation artist.

Jane Alexander completed a Master of Arts in Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in 1988. She has been professor at the Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town, since ...

Article

Alvim, Fernando  

Angolan, 20th – 21st century, male.

Active in Belgium from 1987.

Born 8 August 1963, in Luanda, Angola, of Portuguese origin.

Painter, collage artist, installation artist.

Fernando Alvim has lived and worked in Luanda, Brussels and Johannesburg. In Brussels he founded Camouflage, Europe's first centre of contemporary African art, the counterpart of the centre in Johannesburg. His work derives from memory, particularly of the war liberating Angola from colonialism, a war whose horror and misery he lived through. A particular vision of African tradition expresses itself through his painting....

Article

Aniaku, Bethel  

Togolese, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 4 July 1970, in Lomé.

Painter (mixed media).

Bethel Aniaku has shown his work at group exhibitions since 1993, including at the Goethe institute in Lomé (1994); the Salon International des Arts Plastiques (Sarakawa Hotel, Lomé, 1996...

Article

Arezki, Aoun  

Algerian, 20th – 21st century, male.

Active in France since 1977.

Born 1955, in Ittourar.

Installation artist, painter. Urban landscapes, Still-lifes.

Aoun Arezki studied at the schools of fine art in Algiers and Paris, and worked in the studio of Jean Clos in Paris.

In his early work, he painted large, abstract canvases and created installations that featured reproductions of devastated nomadic Arab encampments. He then spent an increasing amount of time on his painting, developing a deliberately limited artistic vocabulary. Paper that has been left in the sun is then glued to the canvas (using the technique of marouflage). The range of colours employed has also been reduced: ashy greys and rusty reds now contrast with large white surfaces divided into diptychs. Space and material are thus juxtaposed in large-scale works, usually with no title, featuring sketches of geometrical shapes....

Article

Assangni, Komivi Kisito  

Togolese, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 12 April 1975, in Lomé.

Sculptor (mixed media).

Komivi Assangi followed courses in drawing and painting in the studio of Kodjo Aho from 1994 to 1997 before turning to sculpture. His compositions are assembled from old tools and utensils, planks of wood, jute sacking, nails and lengths of string. He has showed his work in group exhibitions, among them at the Goethe institute in Lomé in ...

Article

Assou, Kossi  

Togolese, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 15 June 1958, in the Côte-d'Ivoire.

Assemblage artist, designer.

Kossi Assou graduated from the college of fine arts in Abidjan and completed his studies in Senegal, Mali, Benin and Ghana. His body of work relies on objets trouvés (found objects) which typify African life and which he re-works to impart new meaning, combining and juxtaposing iron, wood, vegetable fibres, cardboard and so on into highly original decorative compositions where black, kaolin white and red ochres dominate. His furniture designs are distinguished by the incorporation of decorative pictorial elements. Since ...

Article

Azankpo, Tetevi Benissan  

Togolese, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 11 November 1968, in Lomé.

Painter (mixed media).

A self-taught artist, Tetevi Azankpo works with recycled materials such as rusting receptacles, lengths of metal wire and rubber to produce fantasy figurines.

He has exhibited at group exhibitions, among them ...

Article

Bang, Blaise  

Cameroonian, 20th century, male.

Painter, installation artist.

Kapsiki Group.

A mechanical engineer by training, Blaise Bang has also studied art. He is part of the Kapsiki Circle, also known as the Chameleon Circle, the members of which were artists in residence at the École des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg in the Department of Scenography in ...

Article

Battiss, Walter Whall  

South African, 20th century, male.

Born 1906, in Somerset East, Eastern Cape; died 1982, in Port Shepstone, Natal (KwaZulu-Natal).

Painter, watercolourist, draughtsman, printmaker, Collage, installations, performance art.

Walter Whall Battiss was raised in the Orange Free State (Free State), where he was introduced to rock art by William Fowler. He worked in the Rustenburg Magistrate’s Office (...

Article

Bester, Willie  

South African, 20th–21st century, male.

Born 1956, in Montagu (near Cape Town).

Sculptor, mixed media artist. Assemblages.

Willie Bester was born into a mixed race family under the apartheid regime. In 1986, he studied art part time at the Community Arts Project (CAP) in Cape Town, an anti-apartheid art group, and became a full-time artist in ...

Article

Botha, Wim  

South African, 20th–21st century, male.

Born 1974, in Pretoria.

Sculptor, printmaker, installation artist.

Wim Botha graduated from the University of Pretoria with a BA (Visual Art) in 1996, and lives in Cape Town. His work is usually controversial because of its iconoclastic nature, for example, he deconstructed the typical style of well-known South African artist J.H. Pierneef and of classical portrait busts, and he uses recycled Bibles to sculpt Christ figures. He has received a number of prestigious awards, including the first Tollman Award in ...

Article

Calico, Akoue Arsene Assiongbon  

Togolese, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 31 October 1960, in Aneho.

Painter (mixed media).

Akoue Calico paints mainly on canvas, and produces compositions in ochre and red punctuated by black and white symbols. He has shown his work at group exhibitions, notably at exhibitions of contemporary art at the French cultural centre in Lomé in ...

Article

Calixte, Dakpogan  

Beninese, 20th century, male.

Assemblage artist.

Calixte exhibited at the Africus Biennale in Johannesburg in 1995.

Article

Canaan, Mounir  

Egyptian, 20th century, male.

Born 1919, in Cairo.

Painter (mixed media), collage artist.

Mounir Canaan began his artistic career in the early 1940s and moved into abstraction in 1946. Normally an oil on canvas painter, he also created assemblages of wooden pieces, and collages of printed documents which he arranged along geometrical lines. He showed work at several collective exhibitions in Cairo and at international events including the São Paulo Biennale (...

Article

Comar, Koffi  

Togolese, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 30 March 1973, in Togo.

Painter (mixed media).

A self-taught artist, he has taken part in group exhibitions: in 1994, in Expo-contraste, at the Goethe Institute, Lomé; the first international meeting of Contemporary Arts, Ewolé, the French cultural centre, the Artistik Centre, Lomé; in ...

Article

Designe, Lily  

Tunisian, 20th century, female.

Active in France from 1954.

Born 5 September 1930, in Ferryville.

Painter (mixed media/gouache), collage artist. Stage sets, designs for tapestries.

Lily Designe lives and works in France, where she married. She uses a variety of techniques occasionally based on collage, with frequent references to the supernatural aspects of the theatre. She tends more towards the magical than the fantastic....

Article

Dimé, Moustapha  

Senegalese, 20th – 21st century, male.

Born 1952, in Louga.

Sculptor of assemblages, installation artist.

Moustapha Dimé settled in 1966 in Dakar, where he studied sculpture. From 1973, he travelled to Burkina Faso, the Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Togo and Gambia, where he got to know various forms of traditional art and became fascinated with the mystical and spiritual dimensions of art works. In ...