Resonance

Amoako Boafo, Untitled (Standing Nude), acrylic and coloured pencil on canvas

Sometimes people ask why this artist and not another? Is it the right gallery, right place and time, luck? I’m sure a bit of all can’t hurt. But all I know is that before I knew who the Ghanaian artist Amoako Boafo was, my eyes immediately went to that one painting in the room (above, first auctioned by Christie’s in 2022 and last month by Sotheby’s in 2024). That one painting made me stop and look. His.

Amoako Boafo, Labios Entreabiertos, Uñas Blancas, 2023-2024

Amoako Boafo, Libby and D-Lee, 2019, oil on canvas

Against areas of bold, flat colour Boafo paints the bodies of his subjects with his fingertips; the circular, thick passages lending an intimacy and an immediacy to his portraits. His often large-scale works portray his friends and people he admires with joy and candor. Focused on Black Identity, he says, “I want the characters to be strong, I want them to be free, I want them to be independent, I want them to be unapologetic.”

Amoako Boafo, Tonica Hunter, 2017, oil on canvas

Amoako Boafo, Untitled (Portrait of a Young Man), 2018, oil on card

Born in 1984 in Accra, the capital of Ghana, Boafo left a career in tennis to pursue art, moving to Vienna in 2014. Overcoming discrimination by galleries which were initially not interested in showing work featuring Black figures, he has become one of the most sought-after artists with solo exhibitions worldwide at renown museums and galleries.