What is it about?
A burgeoning body of West African artistic production draws on photography, advertising, graphic design, European art history, and Ghanaian history and culture but does not subscribe to a dichotomy between 'traditional' and 'modern' visual culture. The works of these Ghanaian artists constitutes a local modernity located in Kumasi, a vibrant trading city at the centre of local, national, and international networks. Although the Ghanaian painters who practiced at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, influenced the sign painters such as Alex Amofa, the focus of this selection from the doctoral thesis: Kumasi Realism 1951-2007: an African modernism (HURST, 2013).
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Why is it important?
Alex Amofa uses indigenous and other techniques to produce artworks that have implications for contemporary visual practices.
Perspectives
Alex Amofa experiments in fine art, which he considers to share the same materials with advertising and commercial art. He worked with pastels over black-and-white xeroxes to arrive at Kumasi Realism. It was an engrossing experience to research and write about this Ghanaian master of sign painting. I hope you find the chapter interesting.
Dr Atta Kwami
Independent
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This page is a summary of: Kumasi Realism, Duke University Press,
DOI: 10.1215/9780822374961-088.
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