Kehinde Wiley
American portrait painter known for naturalistic portraits of Black subjects referencing Old Master paintings.
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Kehinde Wiley is an American portrait painter known for his naturalistic portraits of Black subjects that reference the work of Old Master paintings. His work reimagines traditional portraiture to center Black subjects, often drawing on Old Master compositions to challenge historical exclusions.
Lore & Background
Wiley was selected as the first Black artist to paint an official U.S. presidential portrait. The Obama portrait increased Smithsonian visitor numbers from 1.1 to 2.1 million.
His Rumors of War statue is a 30-foot-tall bronze of a young Black man in jeans and dreadlocks that directly confronts Confederate monuments. Wiley's work sparked both praise and criticism, with some conservative commentators objecting to earlier works depicting Black women holding severed heads of White women. Questions have been raised about the extent of his personal brushwork in paintings produced with assistants in his Beijing studio.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Kehinde Wiley (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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