Goodman Gallery is pleased to present ‘Prelude to Mountains’, featuring a selection of early works created over almost two decades (1990-2008). The presentation highlights Kwami’s significant contribution to non-Western expressions of modernism and showcases the pivotal moments that shaped his artistic practice — which coalesced painting, printmaking and sculpture through vibrant compositions.
In contrast to his later schematic geometric forms, these early works provide insight into Kwami’s most transformative period, during which the foundation of his practice was established. They highlight works depicting a diverse range of pictorial elements, employing color and motifs through varied mark-making and brush strokes. The works exude a sensuous and playful quality, brimming with energy and a sense of freedom and experimentation.
The earliest work, ‘Untitled (Murial Blue)’, created in 1990, features a powerful and unusual composition inspired by the wall paintings of northern Ghana, where women paint the outer walls of their houses to protect them from the elements, primarily using earth pigments and dung. Kwami discovered that the women incorporated a powder known as ‘washing blue’, an ultramarine-like substance traditionally used for whitening clothes and referenced it in the work. These influences significantly shape his stylistic language and are evident in both the choice of color and the title of the work.
Artworks
About
Atta Kwami
Atta Kwami (b. 1956, Accra, Ghana, d. 2021, UK) 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 Assante 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.
Atta Kwami studied, and later taught at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). In 2007, Kwami received a PhD in art history, now published as _Kumasi Realism, 1951-2007: An African Modernism, in which he sought to explore past and present influences on West African art, with an emphasis on street art traditions throughout Kumasi, Ghana.
In 2021, the year he died, he was awarded the prestigious Maria Lassnig prize, which recognised later career artists deserving wider career recognition, and, in 2022, The Serpentine unveiled the final public mural commission by Kwami, ‘DzidzƆ kple amenuveve (Joy and Grace)’, which remains on view until September 2024.
This Spring, the Serpentine will publish a monograph about Kwami with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Köln supported by The Maria Lassnig Foundation and marking the first publication dedicated to examining the breadth of Kwami’s singular practice.
Kwami’s work is included in major collections around the world, 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; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York.
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