Atta kwami biography

Ghanaian artist (1956–2021)

Atta Kwami (14 September 1956 – 6 October 2021) was a Ghanaian painter, printmaker, independent art historian and curator. He was educated and taught at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana, and in the United Kingdom. He created works that improvise form and colour and speak to uniquely Ghanaian architecture and African strip-woven textiles, including those of the Kente, the Ewe and Asante of Ghana.

Early life and education

Born George Atta Kwami in 1956 in Accra to Robert Kwami, a music teacher, and prominent first generation Ghanaian contemporary artist Grace Kwami (nee Anku), he studied, and later taught, at the KNUST in Kumasi, Ghana. In 2007 he received a PhD in art history at the Open University for his work for contemporary Ghanaian artists, now published as Kumasi Realism, 1951–2007: An African Modernism (Hurst & Company, 2013).

Career

Kwami was awarded the title of 1st Thoyer Distinguished Visiting Scholar in New York University, New York, from 30 September to 8 October 2008.

Kwami also held the Philip L. Ravenhill Fellowship (UCLA) at the Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, from 1 March to 31 May 2010.

He was Artist-in-Residence at the University of Michigan, Graduate School of Art & Design, in January 2011.

Kwami won the Janet L. Stanley Travel Award to attend the Fifteenth Triennial Symposium on African Art entitled "Africa and its Diasporas in the Market Place: Cultural Resources and the Global Economy" at the University of California, Los Angeles, from 23 to 26 March 2011.

Between 14 and 26 August 2011, he undertook the Howard Kestenbaum/Vijay Paramsothy International Fellowship at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Maine, USA.

In 2021, he won the Maria Lassnig Prize from the Maria Lassnig Foundation in Vienna an

Ghanian painter and printmaker Atta Kwami, whose brilliant geometric works evoke the architecture and textiles of West Africa and explore themes of migration and assimilation, died October 6 at the age of sixty-five. Long a giant in the Ghanaian art world, he in recent years won international acclaim as his work became more widely known. Kwami was also a noted art historian and curator devoted to preserving Ghana’s art history. His 2013 volume Kumasi Realism, 1951–2007: An African Modernism stood against the notion of “authentically” African art as embodied only by traditional styles and instead traced a through line from ancient to modern West African art, positing the latter as a flowing from tradition, rather than rejecting it.

Kwami was born in in Accra, Ghana, in 1956, to a musician father and an artist mother. Having grown up playing with his mother’s paints and textiles, he studied painting at the College of Art at Kwame Nkumrah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, from 1976 to 1980. After spending a few years teaching art in southeast Nigeria, he returned to Kumasi in 1986, teaching painting and printmaking at his old alma mater, where he would remain on the faculty for decades before ultimately dividing his time between between Kumasi and Loughborough, UK. He continued his practice, making vibrantly colored, gridded works whose structure he described as a “smokescreen” for the creation of something new. He described himself as sometimes entering a trance when he painted, or as entering a conversation with other artists or his materials. He began creating freestanding structures that recalled traditional celebration arches in some instances and in others the hand-built wooden vending kiosks that lined the roads in West African towns. Placed in atypical locations, for example under the chilly gray skies of southeast England, these representatives of Ghanian street-art

A selection of music celebrating the artist Atta Kwami, to accompanyhis public mural at Serpentine.

The late painter, printmaker, independent art historian, and curator Atta Kwami (1956 – 2021) is known for his colourful, geometric compositions inspired by diverse references from music, architecture, urban space, and textiles. Music was intrinsically linked to Atta Kwami’s painting practice; the artist directly likened genres such as jazz to his visual language, and would listen to music for hours while making a painting in a single sitting.

Selected by a close friend of Atta Kwami, Christopher Penfold, this playlist brings together some of the artist’s favourite music, combining Ghanaian Highlife music with European classical and American jazz, as well as afro-pop, jazz and folk by musicians from

The qualities I seek in my work are: clarity, simplicity, intensity, subtlety, architectonic structure, musicality (rhythm and tone), wholeness and spontaneity. So many strands inevitably manifest themselves in painting: jazz, the timbre of Ghanaian music, improvisation, arrangements of merchandise and so forth. I also see corresponding aesthetic commonalities between wall paintings and music from northern Ghana, the limited range of earth colours, and the pentatonic scale of the xylophone. – Atta Kwami

Dzidzɔkpleamenuveve (Joy and Grace), Kwami’s pubaboration with the Maria Lassnig Foundation, is on view at Serpentine u If you are able to visit Serpentine in person, you are invited to enjoy this playlist together with the mural.

Statement for the Afro Comb Project: It is encouraging for my practice to be collaborating on the project, 6000 years of the AFRO COMB. The comb as an aesthetic object has multiple usage, content and possibilities. A wonderful opportunity to re-interpret a vast array of combs from across the African continent.

Atta Kwami, 2013

Biography

Atta Kwami is a painter, printmaker, independent art historian and curator. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Cambridge/Africa Collaborative Research Programme, Art and Museums in Africa (2012/2013). He completed his Ph. D. in Art History at The Open University in 2007. As a Senior Lecturer, he taught painting and printmaking from 1986 to 2006 at the College of Art, KNUST, Kumasi.

A number of his paintings hang in major public collections including the National Museums of Ghana and Kenya, the V&A Museum, London, the National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Newark Museum, USA, The Chazen Museum, University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Michigan Museum of Art and The British Museum.

Kwami’s other awards include:

• Howard Kestenbaum/Vijay Paramsothy International Fellowship, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle, Maine, USA (14th - 26th August 2011)
• Janet L. Stanley ACASA Travel Award to attend the Fifteenth Triennial Symposium on African Art: Africa and its Diasporas in the Market Place: Cultural Resources and the Global Economy, Univerity of California, Los Angeles. (23rd - 26th March 2011)
• Artist in Residence, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA; Roman J. Witt Visitor, Graduate School of Art & Design. (16th - 28th January 2011)
• Philip L. Ravenhill Fellowship, (UCLA) ; Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC. (1st March - 31st May 2010) 1st Thoyer Distinguished Visiting Scholar, New York University, New York. (30th September - 8th October 2008)