This essay appeared in one of the major catalogues about the work of the African-born Brazilian artist Emanoel Araújo (b. 1940). It is a vital part of the wide-ranging discussion about the role of African art in the development of contemporary art. It also places Araújo’s work within a broad cultural and historic context.
Emanoel Araújo was born in the state of Bahia, Brazil. In 1960, he moved to the state capital, Salvador, where he studied printmaking at the Escola de Belas Artes da Bahia. In 1972, he was awarded a gold medal for printmaking at the III Biennale di Firenze (Italy). A year later, in 1973, he was awarded a prize by the APCA (Associação Paulista de Críticos de Arte). From 1981 to 1983 he was the director of the Museu de Arte da Bahia. At an international level, Araújo taught sculpture and graphic arts courses at the Arts College, CUNY (The City University of New York) in 1988. In 2007, the Instituto Tomie Ohtake in São Paulo organized a retrospective that included nearly half a century of his work.
In 1968, the poet George Nelson Preston, who has a PhD in African art and who is based in Harlem, New York, was in charge of the installation of the permanent collection at the Brooklyn Museum. Since then he has handled projects for North American museums, such as the Smithsonian Institution, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The Museum of African Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and in international circles, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Buenos Aires, the Palacio Conde y Duque in Madrid, the Galerie Kleber in Paris, and the Museu AfroBrasil and the Museu de Arte da Cidade in São Paulo, Brazil. He was named Professor Emeritus at CUNY, where he was a professor from 1973 to 2006. Dr. Preston is the director, chief curator, and cofounder of the Museum of Art and Origins at his home in Harlem. He has since been invested as an Akan chief in the Ivory Coast and Ghana.