Ouattara Watts
Ouattara Watts (* 1957 in Abidjan , Ivory Coast ) is an Ivorian neo-expressionist painter who lives in New York .
life and work
Watts was born in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, in 1957, where he spent his youth. His father was trained as a western surgeon and at the same time practiced the traditional African healing methods of the Senufo . His family spoke the official language French and Bambara , a language belonging to the Mande .
Watts finished school at sixteen, disappointing his family, who expected him to pursue a career in medicine . His father let him go his own way as a painter. During this phase Watts became acquainted with literature about Western artists such as B. Picasso . At the age of nineteen, Watts began studying at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris in Paris . In addition to his studies, he visited the Paris museums, where he saw originals by Picasso, Miró , Brancusi and Duchamp , which he only knew as reproductions until then and which had a decisive influence on his early work. He was reluctant to show his own works at exhibitions because he thought they were not ready yet. Over time, the neo-expressionist painting of the 80s ( Cucchi , Schnabel , Basquiat and Penck ) became an important formal basis for Watts painting .
“I needed to make a synthesis of everything I had learned in Africa and everything that I was learning in the West, I had to assimilate it all. (...) My vision is not based only on a country or a continent; It's beyond geography, or what is seen on a map. Even though I localize it to make it understood better, it is wider than that. It refers to the cosmos "
He drew the link between his African origins and Western art through mythology (e.g. number mysticism ), which exist in both cultures. He thinks about the metaphysical relationships between people and their surroundings and tries to combine the occult and the rational , Africa and the West, this world and the hereafter in his painting. As the son of a medicine man who was also at home in Western surgery, this need arose early in his childhood. By emigrating to Paris and later New York Watts became a cosmopolitan who can fall back on all kinds of sources of inspiration in his painting. Enigmatic processes, intertwined plants, chimerical beings and cryptic symbols are shown atmospherically densely in his sometimes very large-format works.
Exhibitions (selection)
Solo exhibitions
- 2008 Outlaw – Magazzino d'Arte Moderna Rome
- 2005 Ouattara Watts – MAM Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art Salzburg , Salzburg
Group exhibitions
- 2007 Crossing Currents - The Synergy of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Ouattara Watts , Hood Museum of Art Hanover , New Hampshire
- 2003 Black President - The Art and Legacy of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti New Museum of Contemporary Art , New York City, USA
- 2002 Documenta11 , Kassel
- 2002 Whitney Biennial , New York
- 1993 45th Venice Biennale , Venice , Italy
- 1991 Ludwig Forum for International Art , Aachen
- 1991 Tate Liverpool , Tate Gallery
- 1991 MoMA PS1 Queens , New York,
literature
- Contemporary Black biography, Volume 43, 2004 ISBN 978-0-7876-6731-3
- Fusion: West African artists at the Venice Biennale Volume 45, 1993 ISBN 978-3-7913-1327-6
- St. James Guide to Black Artists, St. James Press, 1997 ISBN 978-1-55862-220-3
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Artnet: Ouattara Watts , accessed August 11, 2013.
- ↑ Universes in Universe Ouattara Watts , accessed February 11, 2016.
- ^ EM Shostak: Biography Ouattara Watts: answers , accessed August 11, 2013.
- ^ French Institute Alliance Francaise (FI: AF). Retrieved August 11, 2013
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Watts, Ouattara |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Ivorian-American painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 1957 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Abidjan |