Frédéric Bruly Bouabré

Frédéric Bruly Bouabré
Born11 March 1923
Zépréguhé, Ivory Coast
Died28 January 2014(2014-01-28) (aged 90)
Abidjan, Ivory Coast
Known forDrawings
GRO=GLO N°146

Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, also known as Cheik Nadro (11 March 1923 – 28 January 2014), was an Ivorian artist.

Life and career

Bouabré was born in Zépréguhé, Ivory Coast, and was among the first Ivorians to be educated by the French colonial government. On 11 March 1948, he received a vision, which directly influenced much of his later works. Bouabré created many of his hundreds of small drawings while working as a clerk in various government offices. These drawings depicted many different subjects, mostly drawn from local folklore; some also described his own visions. All the drawings are part of a larger cycle, titled World Knowledge. Bouabré also created a 448-letter, universal Bété syllabary, which he used to transcribe the oral tradition of his people, the Bétés. His visual language is portrayed on some 1,000 small cards using ballpoint pens and crayons, with symbolic imagery surrounded by text, each carrying a unique divinatory message and comments on life and history.

Many of Bouabré's drawings are in The Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC) of Meshac Gaba. One of his emblematic drawings is saved in the L'appartement 22 collection on the African continent: "Une divine peinture relevée sur le corps d'une mandarine jaunie", made by Bouabré in 1994 in Abidjan.

Exhibitions

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Ivory Coast artist Frederic Bruly Bouabre dies". BBC News. 29 January 2014. Retrieved 26 April 2026.
  2. ↑ Outsider Art Sourcebook Archived 2018-09-21 at the Wayback Machine (ed. John Maizels, Raw Vision, Watford, 2009, p. 52.
  3. ↑ "Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2022-03-27.
  4. ↑ "Frédéric Bruly Bouabré & Serge Attukwei Clottey". Meer. 2017-05-10. Retrieved 2026-04-09.

Galleries

Further reading