Amoako Boafo valuation
Ghanaian painter of portraits whose skin is finger-painted in bold swirls against flat, bright grounds.
Amoako Boafo was born in 1984 and grew up in Osu, in Accra, Ghana, raised by his mother, who worked as a cook, after his father died when he was young.
What a work by Amoako Boafo is worth
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Bio
Amoako Boafo was born in 1984 and grew up in Osu, in Accra, Ghana, raised by his mother, who worked as a cook, after his father died when he was young. He trained at the Ghanatta College of Art and Design in Accra and in 2014 began studying at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, in the class of Kirsi Mikkola. His portraits, mostly of Black friends, family and acquaintances, and of himself, paint the skin with his fingers in thick, expressive swirls, while clothes, patterns and grounds are flat and brightly coloured, and posture and dress carry much of each sitter's character. A residency at the Rubell Museum in Miami in 2019 brought him wide attention, and in 2020 he worked with Dior on its Spring/Summer 2021 men's collection. In 2021 his Suborbital Triptych flew to the edge of space on the capsule of a New Shepard rocket.
His paintings began to appear at auction in 2020, within a year or two of his first gallery shows, and many were resold soon after they were first bought, so provenance through his galleries, Roberts Projects in Los Angeles and Mariane Ibrahim, and the date and route of any earlier sale are the first questions. Works on paper also appear, including the oil on paper Blank stare of 2021, which Tate acquired in 2025.
Accra, Vienna and Kehinde Wiley
In Vienna he was told his figures were too black, and he kept painting them. He took the jury prize of the Walter Koschatzky Art Prize in 2017 and the main prize of the STRABAG Artaward International in 2019, both in Vienna, and it was there that he moved from the brush to painting skin with his fingers, a way of working that owes something to Egon Schiele.
In 2018 Kehinde Wiley came across his paintings on Instagram, bought several and introduced him to his own dealers in Los Angeles, Roberts Projects, who gave him his first American show, I See Me, early in 2019. Mariane Ibrahim took him on soon after, and Don and Mera Rubell, having seen his work in a group show at Jeffrey Deitch in Los Angeles, offered him the residency in Miami.
Space, dot.ateliers and the museums
Suborbital Triptych, three portraits of himself, his mother and a friend's mother, was printed on the crew capsule of an uncrewed New Shepard flight on 26 August 2021, which reached 106 kilometres. In December 2022 he opened dot.ateliers in Accra, a three-storey gallery, studio, café and library designed by David Adjaye, with a residency for artists from 2023, and later added dot.ateliers Ogbojo, a residency for writers, curators and filmmakers on the edge of the city.
Soul of Black Folks, his first American museum exhibition, opened at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in 2022 and travelled to the Denver Art Museum, the Belvedere in Vienna showed Proper Love in 2024, and Gagosian gave him a solo show in London in 2025. His first exhibition in Italy, It doesn't have to always make sense, is at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani in Venice until November 2026. His work is in collections including the Guggenheim, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Rubell Museum, the Albertina in Vienna and Tate.
Best auction results
- Hands Up HK$26.7m
- Oil on canvas, 2018 · Hong Kong · 1 December 2021
- Publicly reported
- The artist's auction record, about $3.4 million.
- The Lemon Bathing Suit £675,000
- Oil on canvas, 2019 · London · February 2020
- Publicly reported
- Against an estimate of £30,000 to £50,000, in the first year his paintings were offered at auction.
Results as reported at the time of sale, inclusive of buyer's premium. They are a record of what specific works achieved on specific days, not a guide to what any other work is worth.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
