Contemporary African Art Gallery

Fode Camara was born in Dakar, Senegal in 1958. He holds degrees in decorative and fine arts. His awards and commissions are too numerous to mention. Perhaps the strongest validation as to importance of his work is that he is well collected and appreciated in Dakar, the city from which he draws so much of his inspiration. In his painting, he prefers the presence of hand prints or of sandals to signs of sacred calligraphy. He paints also his city, Dakar, with its car rapides... (common transport cars), Yala Yana, high in colors, with the effect of transparency on its windows which gives him the taste of painting on glass. Recently, focusing on the human figure at the expense of abstract, he offers large nudes, critical of the Dakaroise society, such as the irresponsible one hiding behind a sign (or closing his eyes in the face of misery, AIDS etc.) since it is written, Yala Yana. See more

Skunder Boghossian is the best know African artist. His permanent collection short list includes: The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musee d’Art Moderne, Paris; The Studio Museum in Harlem and the National Museum Of African Art, Washington. His formal training at the School of Paris influenced his skill but never touched his heart or imagination. Although he spent most of his adult life in America an only three years of that time in Ethiopia, he is the most Ethiopian of Ethiopian painters. The Ethiopianess of every work of Skunders was astonishing. For a man who only lived three years of his adult life in Ethiopia (1967-1970), he returned to Ethiopia with every work that he did. Perhaps this attribute, more than any other, bespeaks his love for his country and its rich iconography.

Viye Diba was born in Senegal in 1954. He has many degrees to his credit including Post-Doctoral study at the University of Nice. He has spent his life as an artist and a teacher and currently is a professor at the Senegalese National School of Fine Arts and at the Graduate School of Artistic Education of Dakar. He is President of the National Association of plastic Artist of Senegal. Viye Diba is profoundly independent. While many artist being categorized, Viye takes the individuality of his search to a higher level. He claims to consider himself an artist who is a researcher. Nothing new about this; all great artists have an acute sense of observation. However, what Viye Diba claims, and accomplishes, is the ability to see and convey something truly original in what he is observing.