A vision of 7 suns led a self-taught Ivoirian artist to draw the everyday and the holy
The Museum of Modern Art shows the colorful works of Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, a prolific artist from the Ivory Coast who documented his Bété culture — and even created a pictograph language.
In 1948, the late Ivoirian artist Frédéric Bruly Bouabré had a vision that would change his life. On his way to work as a civil servant in the colonial navy in Dakar, then the capital of French West Africa, he said he saw "seven colored suns" creating a "circle of beauty around their 'mother-sun.' "
The experience, he said, inspired him to begin making art as a way to document the lives of his Bété people, an ethnic group in the Ivory Coast known for being, an exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. It is MoMA's first solo exhibition of an artist from West Africa.
