Ivorian painter makes teen struggle major theme in art
YAMOUSSOUKRO, Ivory Coast, (MNTV) – Prominent Ivory Coast painter Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, also known as Aboudia, with his paintings of Ivory Coast’s street kids, has taken his teenage misfit rebellion to the very top, becoming one of the world’s best selling artists.
Today the 41-year-old painter has made a mockery of those jibes, with shaping those experiences in their attractive and innovative artistic expressions.
“When I was a teenager I wanted to paint but my father didn’t want me to,” Aboudia told AFP, remembering how artist was a synonym for “loser” at the time.
Despite the challenges facing black African painters, he ranks 1,311th out of the top 5,000 best selling artists at auction worldwide, according to analyst firm Artprice.
And with 75 of his paintings bought in 2022, Aboudia was the contemporary artist who sold the most canvases that year, according to the Hiscox Top 100 rankings.
But before becoming a touchstone, Aboudia—who spends most of his time in Ivory Coast’s economic capital Abidjan—had to pave his own path in a society that pays scant regard to his profession.
His life story as much as his subject matter invites comparisons with African American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat: both “found themselves alone in the street, but knew how to profit from it”, according to art critic Mimi Errol.
It was Ivory Coast’s post-election crisis of 2010-11 and its 3,000 dead that brought Aboudia to the world’s attention, with the chaos of “The Battle of Abidjan” unspooling in brushstrokes across his canvases.
In line with his own past, he paints young people, “the children of the street”, who were left with extreme challenges by the war.
“This is not their place,” he insisted, urging parents, the authorities, any person aware of the cause of childhood, to get them out of there.
Aboudia took up his art studies at the conservatory in Abengourou, eastern Ivory Coast, before graduating to the Technical Arts Centre of Bingerville in the Abidjan suburbs.
Even then “Aboudia was already very attached to the universe of children”, his old teacher and fellow well-regarded painter Jacobleu recalled.
Galleries in Paris, London, New York and Lagos are now vying for his works — a far cry from the reception he received when he brought his first paintings to Abidjan’s Houkami Guyzagn gallery in the 2000s.
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