Wisdom Edinam Kudowor is a contemporary artist popularly referred to as Wiz Kudowor, born in 1957 in Takoradi, Ghana. He graduated from the College of Art at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi in 1981 with a first class honours degree in Fine Arts. Wiz’s distinctive style of paintings is created using a roller brush and palette knife. These tools are used for laying large areas of colour and more detailed work respectively, a technique he developed during his practice.
Wiz Kudowor is widely considered to be a “trans-cultural visionary”. His work reflects the modern African environment and identity. The African symbols are the points of reference across which he visualizes a whole world of images. He also explores elements of his cultural background using visual language inspired by African symbolic imagery and mythology.
Wiz’s painting career spans over 30 years with exhibitions in Africa, Europe, Asia and the U.S. His artworks can be found in the Osaka Prefecture Contemporary Art Collection in Japan, the Ministry of Culture in the People’s Republic of China, the Ghana National Museum and the African-America Museum in Dallas, Texas.
He has won a variety of art prizes including the Osaka Triennale Bronze Prize and the Ghana Airways Silver Jubilee Art Contest. A relief mural, installed in 1992 at the Kwame Nkrumah Museum in Accra as a monument to some of Ghana’s most important leaders, is one of several public commissions executed in Ghana by the artist.
Wiz currently lives in Accra, Ghana.