René Tavares São Tomé and Principe, 1983

Présentation
René Tavares’ work is based on a process of research spanning through archives, photographs, and literature while bringing to the front stage themes related to historical and socio-political issues that affected different African countries. With a preference for painting and drawing, Tavares’ artistic practice also includes photography, video, and installation. The artist’s work evolves and expands in the form of projects and series that develop over time according to his own experiences of transition between different artistic languages, between the African and European continents, between insular and continental Africa, also between the local and the global, the individual and the collective. By questioning assimilated, neglected, and forgotten heritages and challenging the rigidity of categories and prejudices, the artist’s works are produced in an impulsive and engaged mode to raise awareness and trigger processes of resilience and social empowerment.
 
Using a palette of rich, deep, and earthy colors and working the canvas in layers and all over, Tavares' figurative universe, with its dreamlike atmosphere, is filled with memories and human presence, faces and gazes that look at us throughout space and time. The works also emphasize iconographic and symbolic elements such as cotton flower fields and plantations, specific animals, objects and housings, and the depiction of group portraits. These collective pictures of men and women, either standing peacefully or shown in their interactions and daily activities, aim to reflect on the historical processes of hybridization and miscegenation happening between several ethnic groups, communities, and cultures including components assimilated during the colonial and post-colonial eras. Either through his paintings or multi-medium installations which often included striking words referring to racism and discrimination, Tavares fuses references taken from ancestral practices and belief systems, collective memories, and heritage with contemporaneity and globalization. Thus, the whole work highlights the processes of appropriation, integration, and merging of heterogeneous religious, social, and cultural components that compose many African cultures. 

Tavares holds a Bachelor's in Fine Arts and Visual Arts from the Dakar School of Fine Arts (Senegal), a postgraduate degree in Visual Arts, Painting and Photography from the Rennes School of Fine Arts (France), and a Master's in Art and Heritage Sciences from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Lisbon (Portugal). Highlights of his career include the selection as a finalist for the EDP Foundation New Artists Award (2022), the Public Vote Prize for the Norval Sovereign African Art Prize (2022), the nomination for Africa’s most influential new artistic talent (FNB Joburg Art Fair, 2018), and the Artist Revelation Prize at São Tomé and Príncipe’s biennale of Art and Culture (2002). René Tavares' work is included in several relevant collections, such as the Collection of His Majesty the King Mohammed VI of Marocco, the PLMJ Foundation (Portugal), Kloser Contemporary Art, AAD - African Artist for Development, Omali Lodge - HBD Group, Sindika Dakolo Collection, World Bank Collection of the Government of São Tomé and Principe, EDP Foundation Collection, Lisbon City Council Collection, Norval Foundation Collection and Schulting Art Collection.
 

Available Works

 

Solo Exhibition Catalogue

Œuvres
  • African Garden
    René Tavares
    African Garden, 2023
    Pigment, acrylic and oil on Chinese rice paper
    232 x 290 cm (total) // 58 x 58 cm (each-framed)
  • African Garden
    René Tavares
    African Garden, 2023
    Pigment, acrylic and oil on Chinese rice paper
    58 x 58 cm
  • African Garden
    René Tavares
    African Garden, 2023
    Pigment, acrylic and oil on Chinese rice paper
    58 x 58 cm
  • African Garden
    René Tavares
    African Garden, 2023
    Pigment, acrylic and oil on Chinese rice paper
    58 x 58 cm
  • African Garden
    René Tavares
    African Garden, 2023
    Pigment, acrylic and oil on Chinese rice paper
    58 x 58 cm
  • Bailarinas de Quintal
    René Tavares
    Bailarinas de Quintal, 2024
    Oil, pigment, charcoal and acrylic on canvas
    200 x 186 cm
  • Bumbo - Carruagem Lusa
    René Tavares
    Bumbo - Carruagem Lusa, 2023
    Stencil and pigment on cloth
    173 x 152 cm
  • Cabrito - Carruagem Lusa
    René Tavares
    Cabrito - Carruagem Lusa, 2023
    Stencil and pigment on cloth
    173 x 150 cm
  • Contadora de estórias e a galinha
    René Tavares
    Contadora de estórias e a galinha, 2024
    Mixed media on canvas
    140 x 110 cm
    Vendu
  • Crioulo - Carruagem Lusa
    René Tavares
    Crioulo - Carruagem Lusa, 2023
    Stencil and pigment on cloth
    180 x 152 cm
  • Escarumba - Carruagem Lusa
    René Tavares
    Escarumba - Carruagem Lusa, 2023
    Stencil and pigment on cloth
    178 x 148 cm
  • Grand ma's memories
    René Tavares
    Grand ma's memories, 2023
    Oil, pigment, charcoal, acrylic and gold paper on raw cloth
    177 x 171 cm
  • Grosso - Carruagem Lusa
    René Tavares
    Grosso - Carruagem Lusa, 2023
    Stencil and pigment on cloth
    170 x 144 cm
  • Ladies of Themselves
    René Tavares
    Ladies of Themselves, 2024
    Oil, pigment, charcoal and acrylic on canvas
    182 x 162 cm
  • Leve Leve
    René Tavares
    Leve Leve, 2024
    Mixed media on canvas
    160 x 200 cm
  • Leve Leve Mood
    René Tavares
    Leve Leve Mood, 2023
    Oil, pigment, and acrylic on canvas
    158 x 182 cm
  • Meeting to hear the Atlantic Sound
    René Tavares
    Meeting to hear the Atlantic Sound, 2023
    Oil, pigment, charcoal and acrylic on canvas
    175 x 205 cm
  • Memórias para curar o futuro
    René Tavares
    Memórias para curar o futuro, 2019
    India ink, pigment, and linoleum on Chinese calligraphy paper
    76 x 47 cm
  • Mulato - Carruagem Lusa
    René Tavares
    Mulato - Carruagem Lusa, 2023
    Stencil and pigment on cloth
    174 x 150 cm
  • Nativo - Carruagem Lusa
    René Tavares
    Nativo - Carruagem Lusa, 2022
    Stencil and pigment on cloth
    160 x 160 cm
  • Past and the future together
    René Tavares
    Past and the future together, 2024
    Mixed media on canvas
    140 x 110 cm
    Vendu
  • Petit Dejeuner Dans La Plantation de Café (Cotton peoples reloaded)
    René Tavares
    Petit Dejeuner Dans La Plantation de Café (Cotton peoples reloaded), 2021
    Mixed media on paper
    195 x 300 cm (total) // 65 x 50 cm (each)
  • Piá mù – Look at me
    René Tavares
    Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
    Pigment, charcoal, acrylic on wood glued to plywood
    66 x 56 x 3 cm (each)
  • Piá mù – Look at me
    René Tavares
    Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
    Plywood and oil and pigment on wood
    66 x 56 x 3 cm
  • Piá mù – Look at me
    René Tavares
    Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
    Plywood and oil and pigment on wood
    66 x 56 x 3 cm
  • Piá mù – Look at me
    René Tavares
    Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
    Plywood and oil and pigment on wood
    66 x 56 x 3 cm
  • Piá mù – Look at me
    René Tavares
    Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
    Plywood and oil and pigment on wood
    66 x 56 x 3 cm
  • Piá mù – Look at me
    René Tavares
    Piá mù – Look at me, 2022
    Plywood and oil and pigment on wood
    66 x 56 x 3 cm
  • Preto - Carruagem Lusa
    René Tavares
    Preto - Carruagem Lusa , 2022
    Stencil, pigment and acrylic on cloth
    174 x 154 cm
  • Special Request to the Divine River
    René Tavares
    Special Request to the Divine River, 2024
    Oil, pigment, charcoal and acrylic on canvas
    190 x 195 cm
  • This Land Belongs to Us
    René Tavares
    This Land Belongs to Us, 2023
    Oil, pigment, charcoal, and acrylic on canvas
    175 x 205 cm
    Vendu
  • Two Lives Tchiloli
    René Tavares
    Two Lives Tchiloli, 2012
    Photography on cotton paper and polypropylene film
    70 x 50 cm
  • Two Lives Tchiloli
    René Tavares
    Two Lives Tchiloli, 2012
    Photography on cotton paper and polypropylene film
    70 x 50 cm
  • Two Lives Tchiloli
    René Tavares
    Two Lives Tchiloli, 2012
    Photography on cotton paper and polypropylene film
    70 x 50 cm
  • Two Lives Tchiloli
    René Tavares
    Two Lives Tchiloli, 2012
    Photography on cotton paper and polypropylene film
    70 x 50 cm
  • Untitled
    René Tavares
    Untitled, 2024
    Mixed media on canvas
    140 x 110 cm
Expositions
Foires
Presse
Vidéo
Catalogues
Evénements
Store
  • Sketch. Series: Atlantic Nation
    René Tavares
    Sketch. Series: Atlantic Nation, 2021
    Mixed media on paper
    78 x 58 cm