Frédéric Bruly Bouabré

Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, who also went by Cheik Nadro, lived from 11 March 1923 to 28 January 2014 and was an artist from Ivory Coast. He was born in Zépréguhé and was part of the first generation of Ivorians to receive an education under French colonial rule. A vision he had on 11 March 1948 shaped much of his later output. While working as a clerk in government offices, he produced hundreds of small drawings on a wide range of subjects—many drawn from local folklore, others from his own visions—all belonging to a larger series he called World Knowledge.

He also devised a 448-letter universal syllabary for the Bété language, which he used to write down the oral traditions of his people. His visual language appears on roughly 1,000 small cards, made with ballpoint pens and crayons, where symbolic images are surrounded by text; each card carries a unique divinatory message and commentary on life and history. Many of his drawings are held in the Contemporary African Art Collection of Meshac Gaba. One emblematic piece from 1994, created in Abidjan, is preserved in the L'appartement 22 collection: "Une divine peinture relevée sur le corps d'une mandarine jaunie".

Bouabré’s work has been shown widely, including at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2022), the Venice Biennale (2013), Documenta 11 in Kassel (2002), and the touring exhibition Magiciens de la Terre in Paris (1989), among many other venues across Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas.