Page 19 - Powerlist 2020

9 The Top 10

Lynette
Yiadom-

Boakye

Artist

emand for artist Lynette’s work showed no sign pre-sale expectations at Christie’s auction house. Knave had
of slowing in 2019. At a Phillips auction in June, a been expected to sell for between $91,620 and $122,160, but
Dlife-size portrait of a standing man called Leave a went for $690,736, five times the estimate.
Brick Under the Maple, sold for £795,000, almost double its Acclaimed worldwide, in 2017 she staged a solo show at the
highest estimate. Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland. Lynette’s exhibition, Under-
A retrospective of her work will be held at Tate Britain in Song for a Cipher, ran at the New Museum for Contemporary
2020, and she had nine newly commissioned works at the Art in New York from May to September 2017.
Ghana Pavilion at 2019’s Venice Biennale. Some of Lynette’s If further proof were needed of Lynette’s soaring
work will go on show at the National Museum of Ghana in popularity, one need look no further than the front row of
Accra after the Biennale. the art auction at Sotheby’s, New York, last year. Her work
In November 2018, Lynette was announced as the winner featured in the lot that included Kerry James Marshall’s Past
of one of the art world’s oldest and most prestigious awards, Times, which was bought by P Diddy for $21.1million, the
the Carnegie International Top Prize. Winners of the prize, highest amount fetched by a living African American artist.
which was first awarded in 1896 and comes with $10,000, Lynette’s An Assistance of Amber was purchased by
also receive a medal designed by Tiffany & Co. producer and rapper Swizz Beats for $555,000.
In 2013, Lynette was shortlisted for the Turner Prize and With influences ranging from Manet to Degas, she
in 2015 staged her first major London show at the Serpentine creates her figures from composite sources – magazines,
Gallery. She has become increasingly sought-after by acquaintances, photographs – creating characters who are
collectors, with her works hanging in public galleries ambiguous, somehow disrupting one’s sense of self.
including the Tate, Miami Art Museum, Chicago’s Museum of New Museum curator Natalie Bell hails Lynette as “a
Contemporary Art and the V&A. wildly prolific artist” whose works are “timeless but timely,
In October 2015, an oil painting by Lynette far exceeded reminding us of the importance of black portraiture today”.

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