Ernie Wolfe III (born July 30, 1950 in Los Angeles, California) is an art curator, gallerist, outdoorsman, field researcher, and author specializing in contemporary and traditional African art. [1] His specialties include Ghanaian film posters, [2] fantasy coffins, pop art, and commercial art, [3] as well as traditional sculpture from across Africa. [4]
Wolfe is also known for his deep connections with many Los Angeles artists including Ed Moses, [5] Billy Al Bengston, Chris Burden, Lita Albuquerque, Peter Alexander, Gwynn Murrill, Tony Berlant, Larry Bell, and Charles Arnoldi, [6] and for juxtaposing their work alongside African art. [7] He also discovered several acclaimed African artists [8] including Joseph Bertiers. [9]
Wolfe was raised in Westwood and on Mulholland Drive as the son of Clare Wolfe and Ernie Wolfe Jr. [10] He graduated from Harvard School for boys in 1968 and from Williams College in 1973 with a degree in Spanish Literature. After his focus shifted to African art in 1975, he studied under Roy Sieber, [11] the first tenured African art professor in the United States [4] Career
Wolfe first became interested in African art while working as a scuba instructor in Kenya in the 1970s for his grandfather and father's business, Wolfe Tours. [1] After fishing on the weekend, he would share the fish that he caught with local tribespeople and began to document and collect the Kenyan arts of utility such as gourds, vessels, neck rests, stools, walking sticks, and clothing that he encountered [4]
Alongside Roy Sieber, Ernie curated the Arts of Kenya exhibition at the Smithsonian Museum in 1979. [12] Two years later he opened a gallery in West Los Angeles called Turkana Primitive and Fine Arts. He expanded to another gallery space, the Ernie Wolfe Gallery in 1989, and to a third gallery, EW3 Gallery, in 2016. [13] Wolfe continues to exhibit, donate, and deal art alongside his wife Diane Wolfe and sons Ernest IV and Russell in Los Angeles.
African art describes the modern and historical paintings, sculptures, installations, and other visual culture from native or indigenous Africans and the African continent. The definition may also include the art of the African diasporas, such as African-American, Caribbean or art in South American societies inspired by African traditions. Despite this diversity, there are unifying artistic themes present when considering the totality of the visual culture from the continent of Africa.
A film poster is a poster used to promote and advertise a film primarily to persuade paying customers into a theater to see it. Studios often print several posters that vary in size and content for various domestic and international markets. They normally contain an image with text. Today's posters often feature printed likenesses of the main actors. Prior to the 1980s, illustrations instead of photos were far more common. The text on film posters usually contains the film title in large lettering and often the names of the main actors. It may also include a tagline, the name of the director, names of characters, the release date, and other pertinent details to inform prospective viewers about the film.
William Victor Higgins was an American painter and teacher, born in Shelbyville, Indiana. At the age of fifteen, he moved to Chicago, where he studied at the Art Institute in Chicago and at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. In Paris he was a pupil of Robert Henri, René Menard and Lucien Simon, and when he was in Munich he studied with Hans von Hayek. He was an associate of the National Academy of Design. Higgins moved to Taos, New Mexico in 1913 and joined the Taos Society of Artists in 1917. In 1923 he was on the founding board of the Harwood Foundation with Elizabeth (Lucy) Harwood and Bert Phillips.
El Anatsui is a Ghanaian sculptor active for much of his career in Nigeria. He has drawn particular international attention for his "bottle-top installations". These installations consist of thousands of aluminum pieces sourced from alcohol recycling stations and sewn together with copper wire, which are then transformed into metallic cloth-like wall sculptures. Such materials, while seemingly stiff and sturdy, are actually free and flexible, which often helps with manipulation when installing his sculptures.
Kigango is a carved wooden memorial statue erected by the Mijikenda peoples of the southeastern Kenya coast. The vigango, which can be stylized, abstracted human-form effigies and are placed vertically rising out of the earth, honor a dead member of the secret Gohu society, or the "Society of the Blessed".
Augustus Lavinus Casely-Hayford is a British curator, cultural historian, broadcaster and lecturer with ancestral Ghanaian roots in the Casely-Hayford family.
The Kane Kwei Carpentry Workshop is a studio established in Teshie, Ghana, since the 1950s. It is known for its design coffins that became symbolic of African artistic creativity. It featured the talents of several artists who would go on to gain fame as fantasy coffin sculptors, including Paa Joe, Kane Kwei, Eric Kwei, Cedi Kwei, and the lead of the shop at Kane Kwei's death, Theophilius Nii Anum Sowah.
Kudjoe Affutu is a Ghanaian artist and figurative coffin and palanquin builder. He was born and still lives in Awutu Bawyiase, Central Region, Ghana. Affutu has made a name for himself in Europe by participating in various art projects and exhibitions.
Ataa Oko Addo was a Ghanaian builder of figurative palanquins and figurative coffins, and at over 80 years of age he became a painter of Art Brut.
Fantasycoffins or figurative coffins, also called “FAVs” and custom, fantastic, or proverbial coffins, are functional coffins made by specialized carpenters in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana. These colorful objects, which developed out of figurative palanquins, are not only coffins but considered works of art. They were shown for the first time to a wider Western public in the exhibition Les Magiciens de la terre at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris in 1989. The seven coffins shown in Paris were made by Kane Kwei (1922–1992) and his former assistant Paa Joe. Since then, coffins by Kane Kwei, his grandson Eric Adjetey Anang, Paa Joe, Daniel Mensah, Kudjoe Affutu, Theophilus Nii Anum Sowah, Benezate, and other artists have been displayed in international art museums and galleries around the world.
Paa Joe is a Ghanaian sculptor, and figurative palanquin and fantasy coffin carpenter. Joe is considered one of the most important Ghanaian coffin or abebuu adekai artists of his generation. He has been involved in the international art world since 1989, and has been included in major exhibitions in Europe, Japan, and the USA. His fantasy coffins are in the collections and on permanent display in many art museums worldwide, including the British Museum in London, the Brooklyn Museum in New York, the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka and many others as well as the private collections of foreign dignitaries. Joe is building an art academy and gallery to support the community and art students across the globe.
Daniel Mensah, also known as Hello, is a Ga carpenter and fantasy coffin artist. He works as an independent artist and carpenter in Teshie, Greater Accra, Ghana.
Roberto Chavez is an American artist, known for his personally symbolic portraits, public murals and "funny-grotesque" paintings that reflect the multicultural landscape of Los Angeles. He was recently included in the Getty Center's Pacific Standard Time: Art in L.A., 1945-1980 and the Smithsonian’s Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art exhibits.
A Ghanaian film poster is a film poster hand-painted in Ghana used to advertise films produced in Ghana as well as world cinema. Ghanaian film posters, particularly hand-painted posters from the 1980s and 1990s, have become noted for their imaginative and unique artistry. They have been exhibited around the world in galleries and museums in Los Angeles, New York, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Chicago, and across Europe.
Mathers Museum of World Cultures is a museum of ethnography and cultural history that features exhibitions of traditional and folk arts at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. It also offered practicum studies at the university for graduate and undergraduate students. The museum also worked to promote local artists. In 2020, the Mathers Museum officially merged with the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology and was closed for renovations. The combined institutions are now the new Indiana University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (IUMAA). Located at 416 North Indiana Avenue. The IUMAA lobby is open and a Grand Opening of the William Gathers gallery is scheduled for October 19, 2024.
Doran H. Ross was an African art scholar, author, and museum director and curator. Ross was a renowned Ghanaian arts scholar who spent 20 years at the Fowler Museum at UCLA managing or curating nearly 40 African and African-American exhibitions shown at 30 venues across the country. His specialties included Ghanaian art, including Asafo flags, gold, elephant art forms, Asante regalia, and the works of Ghanaian painter Kwame Akoto.
Vincent Akwete Kofi (1923–1974) was a Ghanaian artist and academic known for his modernist sculpture, which was inspired by themes such as Pan-Africanism and decolonization. He was described as "Ghana's most important sculptor".
Kwame Akoto is a Ghanaian painter and artist. He lives in Kumasi, Ghana.
Joseph Mbatia Bertiers is a Kenyan painter and sculptor. He is best known for his imaginative depictions of political history and life-size scrap metal sculptures.
Theophilus Nii Anum Sowah is a Ghanaian figurative palanquin and fantasy coffin artist. Nii Anum was the chief apprentice in the Kane Kwei Carpentry Workshop where he worked ahead of other artists like Paa Joe.