“Why abstraction today? By some it has been argued that ever since its early twentieth-century formulations, abstraction never went away, yet for a long period after the 1960s its presence was marginal. It can easily seem an obsolete phenomenon or redundant artistic strategy, but there are now a number of reasons for returning to abstraction, as it reinvents itself in relation to a diversity of twenty first century concerns” — Maria Lind
“Color is life, or a world without color appears to us as dead. Colors are the children of light, and light is their mother. Light (...) reveals to us the spirit and living soul of the world, through colors.” — Alma Thomas
“The Black Arts Movement is radically opposed to any concept of the artist that alienates him from his community. Black Art is the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the Black Power concept.”
—Larry Neal
The title of this essay, which seeks to reflect on the expansive and generative practice of the great modernist creator Atta Kwami is a nod to Darby English’s seminal book “1971: A Year in the Life of Color”. In it, English examines the desire of many black artists to gain freedom from overt racial representation, writing on their efforts to do so through colour and abstraction.
For many artists who found themselves at the wells of modernist traditions at the turn of the 20th century — one marked by the move toward industrialisation, secularisation and a turn away from tradition to that which is circular, ephemeral, fragmented, disjointed and sometimes absurd, the question remains; how do we account for their contribution within the largely exclusive narrative of modernity and modernism? How do we etch accounts of great African artists within art historical scholarship? This work, of understanding the creative and intellectual pursuits of these artists is not only a great act of care for their rigorous artistic practices but also a form of recuperation, by giving primacy to their significance in a powerful way.
Although working from a different locality, Atta Kwami’s work can be read alongside a rich tradition of modernism on the continent and its diaspora, including the works of Ernest Mancoba (South African), Alexander Skunder Boghossian (Ethiopian-Armenian), Louis Maqhubela (South African), Inji Aflatoun (Egyptian) and other important figures whose decades-long journeys have transformed visual art in Africa. Kwami's work transcends conventional boundaries; it is not merely abstract, geometric, political, aesthetic, spiritual—it simultaneously embodies all of these dimensions. His art weaves together vibrant colours and textures, reflecting the complexities of cultural identity and the richness of African heritage. Each work invites us into a dialogue, merging personal narrative with universal themes, inviting contemplation and connection across the diversity of geography, method and time.
Atta Kwami’s exhibition at Goodman Gallery, titled "Prelude to Mountains," resonates deeply with the themes explored in James Baldwin's seminal work, "Go Tell It on the Mountain." The title evokes a sense of journey and revelation, paralleling Baldwin’s exploration of identity, struggle, and the search for belonging. Kwami's work, executed in 2001, after which the show is named, is characterised by a bold background of red, grey, and yellow foregrounded by thin diagonal lines that create a sense of movement and depth, perhaps mirroring a personal narrative of ascent and the complexities of the human experience.
Throughout his career, Kwami absorbed the rich cultural landscape of Ghana, metabolising it within his visual language in different forms. From woven textiles of the Kente cloth of the Ewe people, the architectures of the every day and how women lived and performed their daily duties — Kwami achieved in creating a uniquely African modernism, one that articulates local iterations of transnationality and contemporaneity within a post-colonial context.
In 1999 Kwami lived and worked in Kumasi. In that year — a year that would reveal itself as a critical juncture — he went to Kenya to participate in the 2nd Lake Naivasha International Artist Residency where he painted large, ‘blocky’ paintings on calico, which would become the blueprint to define his style for which he is now widely recognised. These works are different in pitch to the earlier works which had a looser, less defined structure. ‘East’, is exemplary of Kwami’s early experimentation with the grid, seen here through the depiction of rectangles and interconnected triangles rendered inside three vertical lanes. In some ways, ‘East’ can be read as a precursor to the initial archways that he created, which would later entrench his technique. These archways, large architectural structures resembling the outer edges of bridges, facades, etc, painted in bright colours and defined by cubes and lines moving in different directions were inspired by the designs — diamond shapes, triangles, herringbone and other creatures like lizards — found in informal traders' kiosks peppered across most African countries. These archways, he showcased his initial at the Jeevanjee Gardens in Nairobi in the late 90s, deepened his exploration of dimensionality and expanded his scale of painting.
Through Kwami’s practice, one cannot only read the progression of his personal and artistic enquiries but also read a slice of art historical context that has come to define the questions contemporary artists continue to grapple with today. Author Maria Lind writes on abstraction as characteristic of the capacity to allow for self-reflection, noting that “to this day abstraction is characterised by co-existence of ideal and matter, transcendentalism and structuralism - an ambiguity not to be shied away from but instead to be acknowledged and explored.”
While painting is often associated with aesthetics, technical skill and the sensual, it can also be understood as a conceptual endeavour that challenges traditional notions of artmaking. Kwami’s work is an indication of this. Rather than focusing solely on aesthetic pleasure, his work contains the quality that allows communication of complex themes related to identity, culture and social dynamics. For instance, in the late 90s, he was the only painter of Ghanaian origin to participate in the exhibition, “South Meets West” which was curated by Bernard Fibischer at the Kunsthalle Bern in Switzerland; exhibiting alongside artists Jane Alexander (South Africa), Fernando Alvim (Angola), Meschac Gaba, (Benin), Kendell Geers (South Africa), Tapfuma Gutsa (Zimbabwe), Goddy Leye (Cameroon), Zwelethu Mthethwa (South Africa), Tracey Rose (South-Africa), Yinka Shonibare (Nigeria), Pascale Marthine Tayou (Cameroon), Yacouba Touré (Ivory Coast), Minnette Vari ((South Africa) and Dominique Zinkpe (Benin). His inclusion in this show, which sought “to suspend the ongoing cultural isolation of South Africa in order to encourage communication between artists from the South and from the West” is exemplary of how his work was read within a conceptual frame even though the show received widespread criticism, particularly among many artists from the continent.
To read Kwami as simply an abstract artist who is interested in geometry would be to miss the point. This is because his abstraction and geometry are rooted in specificity as well as the rich diversity of Ghana. His ability to blend his interest in traditional practices and narratives alongside an appreciation of Western art history, literature and music is reminiscent of the concept of natural synthesis, a central tenet of the Zaria Art Society, a pioneering movement in Nigerian art that emerged in the 1960s. Coined by the artist Uche Okeke, natural synthesis encapsulated an approach to art-making that sought to merge the very best of traditional African artistic practices with modernist techniques and ideologies. This strategy, and we might even stretch it and say philosophical stance, redefined many artists’ relationship with artistic practice. By recognising and acknowledging the importance of celebrating one’s cultural heritage, often marginalised and repressed, artists could create new forms that opened up possibilities of dealing with the past while also being relevant to the present.
Kwami’s peripatetic nature necessitated what theorist Homi Bhaba refers to as “new contact zones” in his theorisation of hybridity. This notion of creating “a third space” that blends modern, traditional, contemporary, past, present, East and West seeped into his methods and process - he was able to paint very quickly, improvising and at times attempting to finish a work in one sitting, often varying the scale of the works depending on where it was created. We see this in the hurried mark-making and ‘scratches’ in a work such as ‘Untitled’ from 1992. At the same time, he took his time with some works - even working through certain ideas over years, perhaps best described by his partner Pamela Clarkson in a phone call interview earlier this year; “It was very difficult to pin him down. He was a kind of maverick.”
It is perhaps most fruitful to understand Kwami’s practice as a manifestation of a fluid and shifting modernism hovering at the edges of multiplicity. In this regard, I read his practice as being rooted in two key ideas;
a) an engagement with overlapping and multiple configurations, and
b) going beyond conventional formulas to create works that register complexity.
Whether it is in the source material that inspired him and on which he built his foundations or in the visual elements he experimented with; layering, nuance and multiplicity always seemed to course through the work.
In contrast to realist painters, one might be tempted to think that his works were devoid of input from his surroundings and yet its influence is wholly palpable. Early on in his career, Northern Ghana became important in defining his language. He studied the women painters who would paint the facades of their homes to protect them from the elements, inspired by their geometric designs, he started to create what he would later refer to as “schematics”. In these works, what is revealed is that to think schematic is to think systematically, structurally, and symbolically. Perhaps also, it is to think grid…. that is to say in terms of order, organisation, and connection. By evoking the material of the Kente fabric ubiquitous in West Africa, Kwami calls on rich practices of weaving linked too to traditions of quilt-making elsewhere. Ofcourse, both weaving and quiltmaking embody a tactile exploration of geometry, where each patchwork mirrors the deliberate arrangement of shapes. Just as the weaver harmonises colours and forms to create a cohesive narrative, so too does the painter orchestrate images on a canvas to evoke emotion and structure. Both practices celebrate the interplay of individual components—stitched or painted—transforming them into a unified whole that resonates with rhythm, balance, and the beauty of asymmetry.
Kwami’s engagement with colour is also nuanced - at times exploring pigments and hues through primary tones (as in ‘East’ and ‘Arlesheim’) and other times reaching for a darker and more complex palette (as in ‘Dakpe’ and ‘Carnak’). In the previously mentioned text, Darby English argues that important experiments came from colour’s special status as a cultural symbol and rigorous investigations of colour. Through such investigations, Kwami’s work is reminiscent of artists whose work is founded on colour. For these artists, the idea was that colour dictated the structure, not the other way around. Take Alma Thomas for instance, for whom colour was life, where “colors are the children of light, and light is their mother”. Born in 1891, one of the earliest recorded Black abstract painters, Thomas believed that “a world without color appears to us as dead.” Elsewhere I write about colour as an object, as an effective tool of creation but also as a tool for artistic resistance and refusal. Colour as a dematerialised object, a durable means of conveying meaning. Nowhere else is this clearer than in Kwami’s suite of paintings included in the exhibition, “Prelude to Mountains”. Every hue, value, intensity and gradation, suggests a harmony that opens up new worlds and possibilities for dialogue. A less reflected aspect of Kwami’s career is his printmaking, complements of which are evident in his paintings. Printmaking shares a similar affinity for bold, graphic lines and geometric forms that are prevalent in his work. Just as his canvases explore vibrant cadences of rhythmic compositions, his work in other mediums (prints and large structures) emphasises clarity and balance, often reflecting the same grid-like organisation.
Kwami was often described as quiet, thoughtful and dignified by those who knew him. An enigma, not only concerning his work but also in his personality. He displayed an intense focus on his work and expressed an eccentricity that revealed itself through a hunger for experimentation and full courage to go against the grain. At a time when his contemporaries were creating works engaging realism, particularly through figuration, Kwami was already painting abstract and geometric forms that challenged convention. He did this not out of an actively defiant dispensation but rather out of curiosity and a passion for experimentation. His father, who studied music at the Royal College of Music in London, had a deep appreciation for music. Although he died when Atta was still very young, Atta shared this bond and grew to love Classical music and Jazz, in particular - from Bach, Beethoven, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Bill Evans. His work is influenced by his love for music whose sonic registers find their way in how shapes interact on the surface of his works. Much like the composition of the jazz music that poured over the studio as he was working, Kwami constructed fragments of changing, connecting and colliding elements in very specific ways. His mother, Ghanaian ceramicist and multi-disciplinary artist, Grace Salome Abra Anku Kwami was a critical influence in his life. A revered artist in her own right, Grace was fascinated with clay from a very early age. Her series of clay heads —Head of small boy (1990), Two heads (Boy and girl) (1995), Bust of a woman with beads (1995) —are exemplary of her incredible talent as a sculptor.
Atta Kwami’s work weaves the linear structure of the grid with vibrant cadences creating a visual language that reverberates. Each work carries its own narrative, revealing layers of meaning found in the title, and composition. One painting might reflect his experiences during a transformative period in Ghana, where he drew inspiration from local textile traditions and the communal spirit of his surroundings while another might explore the interplay of colours that could evoke memories of a particular time and place - infusing the work with a sense of history. With the extraordinary talent of breathing life into the ordinary and banal, Atta Kwami’s work continues to provoke us not only about our relationship with aesthetic beauty but also our relationship with the world.
