Kehinde Wiley: African American Painter

Born in 1977 in Los Angeles, Kehinde Wiley is an African American painter, a Yoruba father from Nigeria and an African American mother. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Tired of her son lying in the streets, her mother enrolled her in drawing classes. For him, it is a real revelation and he decides to become an artist. He went to Yale University to study and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute (1999) and a Master of Fine Arts in 2001.
 His style is characterized by the desire to put black man back in the heart of history. He takes up great classics of the History of the art which he recomposes with Afro-American characters imbued with hip-hop culture. Initially, Wiley’s portraits were based on photographs taken of young men found in the streets of Harlem. He remixes the portraits made by David, Titian or Van Dyck.

Since 2006, as part of his The World Stage project, Kehinde Wiley is exploring the world. He travels the streets of the favelas of Rio, Dakar in Senegal and the suburbs of New Dehli. From his impromptu encounters with these disadvantaged neighborhood residents, he painted realistic portraits.
Wiley’s work has been exhibited around the world and is in the permanent collections of many museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; The Studio Museum in Harlem; The Denver Art Museum; The Los Angeles County Art Museum; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; The High Museum of Atlanta; The Museum of Art of Columbus; The Phoenix Art Museum; The Milwaukee Art Museum; The Jewish Museum in New York; And the Brooklyn Museum, in New York.
He is represented in France by the Daniel Templon Gallery. For the Petit Palais, in France, Wiley exposes the religious iconography of Christ and the figure of the Virgin.

• Website : www.kehindewiley.com 

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