Nana Yaw Frimpong: A royal footprint of modern Ghanaian painting

Abstract

Ghanaian modernist painting started with the establishment of Achimota school in 1927 where the artists learned to combine the traditional Ghanaian artforms with the European representation artistic techniques. Though the influences of this new movement went beyond the academically trained artists to affect the self-trained artists, very little is known about it. The main objective of this paper was to  conduct a biographical study of Nana Yaw Frimpong who without any art college training, booked a notable slot for himself through his painting within the modern Ghanaian art space. An Iconographic analysis of five paintings of Nana Yaw Frimpong using Erwin Panofsky’s three-step approach which include 1. the pre-iconographical description, 2. the iconographical analysis, and 3. the iconological interpretation. The selected paintings were compared to the philosophical underpinnings of the works of the earlier academically trained artists from the Achimota school. The findings revealed that the philosophy and style of Nana’s paintings were the philosophical foundations of modern painting in Ghana hence, placing Nana within the Ghanaian modern painting space.