Kehinde Wiley

Born on July 25, 1977 in Los Angeles, California, Kehinde Wiley inherited the African genes from both his parents – his father Yoruba, who is from Nigeria and his mother, who is of African-American descent. Since childhood, Wiley’s family was really supportive of his passion towards art.

They even had him enrolled in after-school art classes. When he was 12 years old, he spent some time at an art school in Russia. He grew up with his mother and had never even met his father. When he turned 20, he went on to explore Nigeria in search of his father.

In 1999, Kehinde Wiley earned a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the San Francisco Art Institute following his Master’s degree in Fine Arts from Yale University, School of Art in 2001.

The portrait genius, Kehinde Wiley’s paintings are mostly inspired by the Old Masters paintings when it comes to the pose of the figure in the canvas.

He fuses styles of different periods starting from French Rocco, Islamic architecture, urban hip hop, the “Sea Form Green” of a Martha Stewart Interiors color swatch and stretching up to West African textile design.

His works mostly revolves around what he sees in the street, focusing on how young African-American men are treated and looked upon in the society. He has also painted men from Harlem’s 125th Street, along with the neighborhood in with he was born, the South Central Los Angeles.

His models were asked to imitate poses from the paintings of great masters of Renaissance such as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Tiziano Vecellio. Wiley’s paintings portray masculinity which is expressed by the poses of power he derived from these great painters. In 2016, he had a retrospective at the Seattle Art Museum. His exhibit, Trickster, was displayed at the Sean Kelly Gallery, New York City in May 2017.

In the October of 2011, Kehinde Wiley was awarded the Artist of the Year Award from the New York City Art Teachers Association. He was also honored with the Canteen Magazine’s Artist of the Year Award. He has also featured in a commercial as a 2010 Character Honoree on the USA.

His works were exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery in 2008.

Wiley has exhibited two paintings with a similar theme – a black woman holding a knife in one hand with a white female’s severed head in the other hand. When an explanation was asked, he simply replied that it was a “sort of play on the ‘kill whitey’ thing.”

In the October of 2017, former US president Barak Obama chose Wiley to paint an official portrait of him which was to appear in Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery.

Being a genius artist, it is no surprise that Kehinde Wiley has hundreds of thousands of followers on his social media accounts.

Available as @kehindewiley on Instagram, he has 306 thousand followers and his portrait of the former American President Barak Obama has received 223 thousand likes. Also available as @kehindewileyart on Twitter, he has 11400 people following him.

Wiley, who was given the opportunity to paint a portrait of Barak Obama on October 2017 for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, has recently completed and unveiled his work.

But Twitter’s sharp eyed audience was confused about the fold on Obama’s left pinky finger believing it to be an extra finger.

Many people want to know if the artist had accidentally added the extra pinky. The former president and his wife were extremely pleased with Wiley’s work and even made a joke that he had asked Wiley to make his hair “less gray” and his ears “smaller”.