Atta Kwami

About

Goodman Gallery is delighted to present Atta Kwami’s first solo show with the gallery since announcing representation of the estate in partnership with Beardsmore Gallery. This exhibition presents a selection of important works made over a period of twenty years, showing the breadth of Kwami’s practice and highlighting the artist as one of the most important African abstract painters of the 20th century. Belatedly recognised, Kwami was awarded the prestigious Maria Lassnig prize in 2021 – honouring artists deserving of greater visibility. The prize resulted in a major mural commission at the Serpentine Gallery and the artist’s first monograph which will be published alongside this exhibition.

With a career spanning forty years, Kwami was a distinguished artist, art historian and curator, living and working between the UK and his home country, Ghana. His colourful works of vibrant geometric patterns are inspired by a wide range of influences, from Ewe and Asante cloth to jazz, the tradition of mural painting and the design of street kiosks along the roads of West-African towns. Kwami is known for expanding the notions of painting, basing his practice both in the visual world of his native Ghana and in reflections on modernism.

The exhibition showcases work from 1999 to 2021, alongside an abstracted Kiosk structure Money Can’t Buy It (2019) constructed of found wood and conceived of as expanded three-dimensional paintings. The architectural scale work reference to the improvised vernacular of Ghanaian street painting. The show expounds on the range of influences on Kwami’s practice including his extensive travel across the African continent.