Ablade Glover

Ablade Glover is a Ghanaian artist and educator born 1934. He has exhibited his art works internationally, building a reputation over several decades, as well as being regarded as an icon on the contemporary West African art scene.

Professor Ablade Glover’s style has been described as “swirling between abstraction and realism and his subject matter typically favors large urban landscapes, lorry parks, shantytowns, thronging markets and studies of the women of Ghana. Asked about his influences, he has said: “…if you notice, you see a lot of women in my work and people do ask me, why do you paint so many women? The first time I was asked the question, I didn’t think about it. I just opened my mouth and said because they are more beautiful than men. That wasn’t a serious answer. It was later, thinking about it, that it struck me they have courage. Women of Africa have some courage and they show it. When they walk the street, they are elegant. They are courageous, they are brave. When they are going about, they show it. Men don’t do that, do they?”

Glover’s fascination with movement and colorful energy is evident in the palette knife application of thick impasto layers. In his abstraction of the crowd scenes, Glover draws the eye to the gestures of jagged movements accentuated by bursts of color. He explores the theme of crowds in his body of work, within various scenes at marketplaces, city centers, beaches, bus stations and busy streets.

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“Glover’s unique approach, developed over long years of exploration, settled upon the classical medium of oil paint. His application of thick impasto daubs and swirls of paint, when further worked over with a palette knife, yielded a novel discovery: that movement is in the eye of the beholder. Glover has created a hybrid form of abstraction within representation, which in his remarkable hands becomes capable of suggesting the dynamic processes of constant flux, even after the oil paint solidifies into static, encrusted forms.

Ablade Glover Education
Teacher training education – Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi (1957–58)
Textile design (scholarship) – London’s Central School of Art and Design (1959–62)
Art education – University of Newcastle upon Tyne (1964–65)
Masters Fine Art – Kent State University, United States (1971-1972)
PhD Fine Arts – Ohio State University, United States (1972-1974)

Record Price at Auction Ablade Glover (update 2020 September)

US$ 33,500 on March 28^th 2018, The Tiroche DeLeon Collection placed Glover’s “Market Intrigues” for auction at the second Sotheby’s Modern & Contemporary African Art Auction.

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Selected solo exhibitions Ablade Glover
1980 National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos, Nigeria
1980 National Theatre, Lagos, Nigeria
1963/68/70/72 Art Centre, Accra, Ghana
1982/84/87 October Gallery, London, UK
1982 Hotel Mammy Yoko, Freetown, Sierra Leone
1982 Africa Centre, London, UK
1983 The Commonwealth Institute, London, UK
1984 UCLA International Students Centre, Los Angeles, USA
1986 Galerie Go, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
1986 National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe
1989 British Council, Accra, Ghana
1990 Galerie Arts Pluriels, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
1991 Biz Art Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
1998 City Hall, Toronto, Canada
1998 City Hall, Hamilton, Canada
2000 Galerie Arts Pluriels, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire
1995/99/01 October Gallery, London, UK
2009 75th Anniversary, October Gallery, London, UK
2013 Art Dubai, Dubai, UAE (with Nubuke Foundation)
2014 80th Anniversary, October Gallery, London, UK

Selected Collections
AAI African American Institute Head Office, New York, USA
Africa Centre, London, UK
Ashanti Goldfields Company Headquarters, Accra, Ghana
Arts Council of Ghana, Accra, Ghana
Barclays Bank Ghana Ltd., Accra, Ghana
Commonwealth Foundation, London, UK
Ghana Museums and Monuments Board, Accra, Ghana
ICC International Conference Centre, Accra, Ghana
Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University, California, USA
Kosmos Energy, Texas, USA
Mobil Oil Ghana Ltd., Accra, Ghana
National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos, Nigeria
National Gallery of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe
O’Hare International Airport (mural), Chicago, USA
Ohio State University International House, Columbus, USA
Royal Collection of Prince and Princess Takamado, Tokyo, Japan
Standard Chartered Bank Ghana Ltd., Accra, Ghana
Tullow Oil PLC, London, UK
UNESCO Headquarters, Paris, France
Visiting Arts, London, UK
World Bank, Washington DC, USA

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