Thomas “Amoako” Boafo born on May 10th, 1984 in Ghana is an up and coming painter in the art world, thought to be one of the Most Influential Artists of 2020.[1] He grew up in Osu in the Greater Acra Region of Ghanna, losing his father at a young age, living with his financially struggling single mother. While he had dreams of being an artist, he thought it simply wasn’t possible, “It’s something that I wanted to do from the beginning, but in Ghana, we don’t have the arts infrastructure. You have to find those things yourself.”[2] Luckily for Boafo, his mothers employer must have seen talent in the young mans work, footing his tuition and allowing him to go to the Accra’s Ghanatta College of Art, graduating in 2008 with the Best Portrait Painter of the Year award. In 2014 he moved to Vienna with his soon to be wife Sunada Mesquita, and enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts for his MFA.
He struggled when he first moved to Vienna to make it as an artist, painting portraits of those in the city’s cultural area until he learned to ditch his brushes and work with his fingers, creating extremely interesting and textured art that won him his next award in 2017, the Walter Koschatzky Art Award for an Artist Under 25. His artwork is known for its bold colors and patterns, challenging the perceptions of black subjectivity, diversity, and complexity.[3] Other than the figures in the paintings, the colors in the paintings are almost completely monochromatic, mixing solid paint and complex patterns in a way that makes the skin and poses pop.
His art finally began to gain further notoriety in 2018 when Kehinde Wiley, an artist known for his presidential portrait of Barack Obama, reached out to purchase one of his works, and subsequently notified his own galleries to his find. While his gallery in Los Angeles had never seen one of Boafo’s pieces before, they offered him a spot when a larger show fell through not even weeks later. The Artists pieces were listed at $10,000 dollars each, and the show was sold out by the end of the second day.
His work quickly grew and grew in popularity, His booth at the Mariane Ibrahim Gallery at Art Basel in Miami Beach back in 2019 similarly sold out. In 2020 his performance only grew, At Phillips in London his painting The Lemon Bathing Suit (2019) a painting featuring an older black woman, resting on a white water float next to the side of a pool in a bathing suit adorned with lemons, sold for the equivalent of $875,000, which was more than thirteen times its original estimate. His work has been acquired by multiple institutions as well, and is not featured in the Guggenheim, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and Vienna’s Albertina Museum.[4]
In this year he collaborated with Dior designer Kim Jones for his 2021 collection, and opened a show called “I Stand By Me” at Mariane Ibrahim’s Chicago gallery. The show, being his first solo exhibition, focuses on reflection during a time of crisis, using techniques that maximize both expression and minimalism, celebrating subjects bound to the world around them, sourcing European wallpapers to explore the possibilities of photo transfers.[5]
While the artist is just getting started its clear that his art is going to only keep going, exploring even more possibilities with his exploration of color and texture.
[1] Artsy Editors, “The Most Influential Artists of 2020”, Artsy.com, December 7th, 2021, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-influential-artists-2020
[2] Nate Freedman, “The Swift, Cruel, Incredible Rise of Amoako Boafo: How Feverish Selling and Infighting Built the Buzziest Artist of 2020”, Artnet, Artnet Worldwide Corporation, September 28th, 2020, https://news.artnet.com/art-world/amoako-boafo-1910883
[3] RobertsProjectsLA, “Amoako Boafo” Roberts Projects, Art Dealers Association of America, accessed December 12th ,2020, https://www.robertsprojectsla.com/artists/amoako-boafo
[4] Arsty, The Most Influential Artists of 2020
[5] Miriane Ibrahim, “Amoako Boafo – I Stand By Me”, Mariane Ibrahim, 2020, https://marianeibrahim.com/exhibitions/29-amoako-boafo-i-stand-by-me/overview/
Sources
Amoako Boafo – I Stand By Me. (2020). Retrieved from Mariane Ibrahim: https://marianeibrahim.com/exhibitions/29-amoako-boafo-i-stand-by-me/overview/
Amoako Boafo. (2021, December 12). Retrieved from Roberts Projects: https://www.robertsprojectsla.com/artists/amoako-boafo
Freeman, N. (2020, September 28). The Swift, Cruel, Incredible Rise of Amoako Boafo: How Feverish Selling and Infighting Built the Buzziest Artist of 2020. Retrieved from Artnet: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/amoako-boafo-1910883
The Most Influential Artists of 2020. (2020, December 7). Retrieved from Artsy: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-influential-artists-2020
Issues in Contemporary Art 