Seydou Keïta

Galleria Marabini is delighted to announce an exhibition of portraits by internationally renowned African photographer Seydou Keïta (1923 – 2001). The opening of the exhibition will take place on September 21st from 6 pm until 8 pm.

The exhibition is comprised of a group of black and white photographic prints taken in the 1950s and 1960s and never before exhibited in Italy. The works have been carefully chosen in concert with the Seydou Keïta Foundation, set up for the preservation, promotion and study of Keïta’s work, based in Bamako, Mali, where the artist was born.

Although formally posed, the portraits, realized in Keïta’s studio, are not contrived or pretentious. Keïta often used bedspreads and other readily available material as backdrops for his photographs. He also offered a variety of costumes, accessories and props for his models, men, women and children, to use. Many portrayed persons arrived in their Sunday best, some in traditional tribal costume, others adopted the attire of the western businessmen, while most combined both indigenous and western elements. The portraits capture not only how the sitters appeared, but also how they saw themselves, and how they wanted to be seen by others. While both a historical and sociological record of life in Mali at the time, the photographs capture with immediacy and intimacy the beauty and humanity of the individual.

Now internationally recognized as a master of the 20th century photographic portrait, Keïta’s work has been exhibited widely in museums and galleries worldwide including solo exhibitions at National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington; Centre National de la Photographie, Paris and Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris. Among the recent group exhibitions: Trade Routes: History and Geography: 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, Johannesburg; In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Big City Artists from Africa, Serpentine Gallery, London. Forthcoming exhibitions include: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland and The Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit.

Numerous museums have purchased Seydou Keïta’s photographic works as part of their permanent collections, including: Credit Suisse Trust Collection; Los Angeles Country Art Museum, Los Angeles; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris.

In correspondence with the exhibition’s opening at Galleria Marabini, the publication titled Seydou Keïta will be released by Scalo.

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Seydou Keita