Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: Selections from the 404 Art Collection is a showcase of more than four dozen drawings by one of Africa’s most revered contemporary artists. Bouabré (b.1923 Zépréguhé, Ivory Coast, Africa; d. 2014 Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Africa) gained international recognition with the success of the 1989 exhibition Magiciens de la Terre at The Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. 

His signature drawings are often executed on found pieces of cardboard, roughly the size of postcards, with ballpoint pens, crayons, and other materials he had around him in his day-to-day life as a government clerk. In 1948, Bouabré said he received a vision in which the “heavens opened up," a moment that greatly influenced the course of his artistic career. From then on, the artist saw himself as a carrier and interpreter of knowledge, and his drawings were a vehicle for him to do so. 

Two of Bouabré’s most significant artistic achievements are his Bété Syllabary and his series The Knowledge of the World. In his Bété Syllabary, the artist created a series of 448 syllabic pictograms that were meant to create a writing reference for the oral traditions of the Bété people, creating a visual encyclopedia for his culture’s traditions. In The Knowledge of the World, Bouabré captured moments of folklore, daily life, and even politics, as a visual record of African knowledge and practices.

This exhibition is the artist’s second museum survey in the United States following his 2022 show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The works at the Boca Raton Museum of Art are on loan from the Miami and New York based 404 Art Collection, and the exhibition coincides with a gift from that collection to the museum of Bouabré’s work.

Guest Curator: Ross Karlan, Ph.D.