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160 - * Al HADJI SY (Senegal, born 1954) Tutu by Miles Davis, 2012…
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Estimate €12,000 - €15,000
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Description
* Al HADJI SY (Senegal, born 1954) Tutu by Miles Davis, 2012 Acrylic and charcoal on canvas 229 x 179 cm Signed, dated, titled "El Sy 12 TUTU de Miles Davis" lower left *** Acrylic and charcoal on canvas, signed, dated and titled lower left, 90⅛ × 70½ in. Painted in 2012. An explicit homage to Tutu, Miles Davis's seminal 1986 album, this work is part of a series El Sy is devoting to committed black American music. Tutu - a title dedicated to the South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, winner of the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize - sounds like a manifesto against apartheid. El Sy transposes this political charge into a singular visual language. Provenance : Private collection Senegal This lot is sold as a temporary import. This lot will be sold under the general VAT system (on the total price at the rate of 5.5%). After graduating from the Beaux-Arts in Dakar in 1977, El Hadji Sy quickly established himself as an avant-garde figure. Rejecting the academic heritage of the École de Dakar, he turned the body into a pictorial tool in its own right, painting with his feet or through performative gestures. Alongside Issa Samb (Joe Ouakam), he co-founded the Agit-Art movement, which combined painting, performance and social criticism. From the mid-1980s onwards, he adopted raw materials - jute rice sacks, tar, wax - paving the way for a powerful gestural abstraction. At the same time, he has worked as a scenographer, photographer, writer and exhibition curator; in particular, he designed the scenography for the 2004 Dakar Biennial and, in the 1980s, became one of the first African curators to collaborate with a European museum. In 1996, he took part in the creation of the Dakar craft village. His work has been shown at major international events, including the São Paulo Biennale (2015) and Documenta 14 in Kassel (2017), establishing his key role in post-independence art in West Africa. Trained in Dakar, El Sy quickly broke away from academic frameworks, asserting a bodily and intuitive approach to the artistic gesture: he paints barefoot, on canvases laid on the ground, involving the whole body in creation. In the 1980s, he became the first black curator to collaborate with a European museum when he designed a collection of contemporary Senegalese art for Frankfurt's Weltkulturen Museum, culminating in the first anthology of Senegalese plastic arts (1989). His work has been shown at the São Paulo Biennial (2015), as well as in numerous institutions in Africa, Europe and the United States. A campaigner for artistic autonomy, El Sy is also behind emblematic venues such as the Village des Arts in Dakar. To this day, he lives and works in his hometown, which he has never left, and his work is deeply international in scope.
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About the sale Arab, African & Indian Modernities
Auction location
Auction time 06/18/2026 at 2:30 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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