Amoako Boafo

(Ghanaian, born 1984)

Amoako Boafo is a Ghanaian contemporary artist known for his portraits of figures typically done on solid color backgrounds. Born in 1984 in Accra, Ghana, Boafo grew up wanting to be an artist despite a lack of major arts infrastructure in his community. After supporting himself as a semipro tennis player for a few years, an older man his mother worked for offered to pay his college tuition, and he graduated from Accra's Ghanatta College of Art and Design in 2008. He moved to Vienna in 2014, and started a series of portraits of Black figures he met in the city, drawing influence from Vienna Secessionists like Egon Schiele. But his breakthrough came when he opted to use his fingers to paint rather than a brush, creating a striking textural contrast in his works. In 2018, artist Kehinde Wiley discovered Boafo's Instagram page, and bought a work from him as well as sending his work on to his own gallerists. Eventually, this introduction led to a solo show of Boafo's work at Roberts Projects in Los Angeles. Since then, Boafo's work has generated considerable international buzz. His works are now in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, New York; the CCS Bard College Museum of Art; The Albertina Museum Vienna, and the Rubell Museum.