Ousmane Sow, Senegalese sculptor, Died at 81

  Artists

Ousmane Sow was born on October 10, 1935, in Dakar, Senegal, and died on December 1, 2016.

He was a Senegalese sculptor of life-size statues of humans and groups of humans.

During 1957, Sow left Dakar to study in France, where he obtained diplomas in nursing and physiotherapy.

Sow returned in 1965, came back to France again in 1968, to return to Senegal again in 1984 with the goal to start a practice in physiotherapy there.

He was inspired by the photographs of the Nuba peoples in southern Sudan, made by Leni Riefenstahl (1902-2003), he changed his career in order to work from 1984 to 1987 on a series of sculptures of muscular Nuba wrestlers.

The statues were bigger than the Nubas are in reality.

In his process, Sow developed a series of new techniques and materials.

However, Sow made sculptures of the Maasai, a people in Kenya and Tanzania, and of the Zulu, a people that live mainly in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa.

Ousmane Sow exhibited worldwide, like on documenta IX in 1992 and on the Pont des Arts in Paris in 1999.

Ousmane Sow passed away at 81 years old.