Ousmane Sow

Ousmane Sow (Dakar, 1935 -) is an artist sculptor Senegal board.

Biography

In 1957, young adult, it leaves Senegal for France where it must give up his project to integrate the school of the Art schools. While living small trades, it obtains the diploma of Infirmier, then of Kinésithérapeute. This trade, which he will exert during a score of years, will not be without influence on its work of sculptor, thanks to the knowledge and the approach of the human body that he will bring to him. During all this period, as an autodidact, it devotes the essence of time that leaves him its profession improve its artistic technique and to make research on materials.

In 1984 it decides to turn over to the Senegal and to open there a private cabinet of Kinésithérapie which it gives up then, at the fifty years age to devote itself entirely to the Sculpture.

It finishes developing a very personal technique. On a made metal reinforcement, of straw, material and hessian other, it models then its subject by spreading out a paste of its made composition of ground and minerals mixed with various products and a long time macerated, which it put of the years to develop and of which it maintains the secrecy jealously.

In 1988, it exposes for the first time its series Nouba which was inspired to him by the photographs of Leni Riefenstahl, to the French Arts center of Dakar.

The following years, it does not stop any more exposing. A little everywhere in France initially, in Germany, in Japan, in America, in Senegal, in Belgium, in Italy then.

In 1999, the exposure of its works, of which the series Little Big Horn, on the Bridge of Arts, with Paris is visited by three million people, completing to bring the recognition of the general public to him after those of the artistic mediums.

Ousmane Sow is regarded today as one of the largest contemporary sculptors.

After the reading of a biography of the General Dumas written by Claude Ribbe, Ousmane Sow prepared a project of statue to replace a work set up in 1906 with Paris on the current place of the Général Catroux but shot down by the Nazis in 1942. A petition was addressed in this direction to Bertrand Delanoë, mayor of Paris by Claude Ribbe who would wish, through the association of the friends of the Dumas general whom it chairs, to offer a copy of the work of Ousmane Sow to the Republic of Haiti, in accordance with a wish emitted in 1838 by the writer Alexandre Dumas, wire of the general.

Works

The man is always in the center of his artistic concerns. Its first series are inspired people of Africa which it does not have need to have met to feel near to them.

  • the series Spree, realized between 1984 and 1987, includes/understands twelve sculptures or groups of sculptures and represents warriors and fighters Nouba (ethnos group of the south of the Sudan).

  • the Masaï series, realized between 1988 and 1989 and consisted of six parts, of which some are made of two sculptures, representing two women, four men, a child and two buffaloes, ethnos group Masaï living with the Kenya and in Tanzania.
  • isolated parts: Gavroche (a part representing a boy and a man), Marianne and the Revolutionists (three parts representing a woman and two men) and All Saints' day Louverture and the old slave (two parts appearing a man and a woman) all carried out in 1989 for the Bicentenary of the French revolution (on ordering of French President François Mitterrand).
  • the series Zulu, realized between 1990 and 1991 and composed of seven characters constituting the scene of Chaka, Zulu founder of the nation (for the first time with this work appears the narrative sculpture).
  • the series Peulh, realized between 1993 and 1994, includes/understands five sculptures representing of the family, daily and ritual scenes.
  • the series Little Big Horn, realized between 1994 and 1999, includes/understands twenty three characters and eight horses, representative of the scenes of battle; the sculpture becomes resolutely narrative.
  • the bronzes drawn from its originals, carried out between 2001 and 2004: “ the Dancer with the short hair ” (series Spree), “ the Fighter upright ” (series Spree), “ the Mother and the Child ” (Masaï series), “ the launcher ” (series Zulu), and “ Sitting Bull in prayer ” (Series Little Big Horn).
  • In 2001 and 2002, it realizes for the International Olympic committee, “ the runner on the starting line ” and request of “Médecins of the world”, a statue of Victor Hugo for the “Day of the refusal of exclusion and misery” (installed with Besancon, place of the Human rights). For the Door of the Third millennium inaugurated with Dakar in 2001, it conceives a “ Femme with the flute ” perched on the second of the three doors imagined by its compatriot, the architect Pierre Goudiaby Atepa.

Random links:Royal company of Medicine | Hope of profit to the poker | Fourth district of Oise | Göran Malmqvist | Mereology