Thomas Amoako Boafo, known as Amoako Boafo (born 10 May 1984), is a Ghanaian painter and visual artist.

Early life and education

Boafo was born and raised in Osu, in the

Greater Accra Region The Greater Accra Region has the smallest area of Ghana's 16 administrative regions, occupying a total land surface of 3,245 square kilometres. This is 1.4 per cent of the total land area of Ghana. It is the second most populated region, befor ...

of Ghana. He attended the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra, and later continued his education at the

Academy of Fine Arts Vienna The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (german: link=no, Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien) is a public art school in Vienna, Austria. History The Academy of Fine Arts Vienna was founded in 1692 as a private academy modelled on the Accademia di Sa ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

Career

Boafo's portraits focus on posture, clothing, and the stroke of skin which he accentuates with the finger painting technique. In 2019, Boafo participated in a residency at the new

Rubell Museum The Rubell Museum, formerly the Rubell Family Collection, is a private contemporary art museum with locations in the Allapattah neighborhood of Miami, Florida, and the Southwest Waterfront neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Opened to the public i ...

in Miami, Florida, and in 2020 collaborated with Dior for their Spring/Summer 2021 Men Collection. His work ''Suborbital Tryptych'', consisting of three portraits of himself, his mother, and a friend's mother, was printed on the top of the crew capsule of a

New Shepard New Shepard is a fully reusable suborbital launch vehicle developed by Blue Origin for space tourism. The vehicle is named after Alan Shepard, the first American astronaut in space. The vehicle is capable of vertical takeoff and vertical lan ...

rocket that performed an unmanned suborbital launch on August 26th, 2021 reaching outer space with an apogee of 106 km. On 26 May 2022, his debut U.S. exhibit, ''Soul of Black Folks'', opened at Contemporary Art Museum Houston.

Collections

Boafo's work is in private and public collections, most recently in the Blenheim Art Foundation,

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Page Museum). LACMA was founded in 19 ...

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue on the corner of East 89th Street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It is the permanent home of a continuously exp ...

, Marieluise Hessel Collection, the Aishti Foundation, the CCS Bard College Hessel Museum of Art, the Pizzuti Collection of Columbus Museum of Art and the Albertina Museum in Vienna.

Recognition

* 2017 – Jury prize, Walter Koschatzky Art Prize * 2019 – STRABAG Art award International

Art market

Boafo is represented by Mariane Ibrahim Gallery in Chicago and Roberts Projects in Los Angeles. In 2021, his ''Hands Up'' (2018) sold for HKD 26.7 million ($3.4 million) at

Christie’s Christie's is a British auction house founded in 1766 by James Christie (auctioneer), James Christie. Its main premises are on King Street, St James's in London, at Rockefeller Center in New York City and at Alexandra House in Hong Kong. It is ...

in Hong Kong.Angelica Villa (December 2, 2021)
Records for Amoako Boafo, Avery Singer, Bernard Buffet Set in Christie’s $192 M. Hong Kong Evening Sale
''

ARTnews ''ARTnews'' is an American visual-arts magazine, based in New York City. It covers art from ancient to contemporary times. ARTnews is the oldest and most widely distributed art magazine in the world. It has a readership of 180,000 in 124 countr ...

''.

References

Living people 1984 births Male painters 21st-century Ghanaian painters Ghanaian male artists 21st-century male artists People from Greater Accra Region {{Portal bar, Biography, Africa, Visual arts

External Links

Amoako Boafo
at Roberts Projects, Los Angeles, CA