Frédéric Bruly Bouabré (Zéprégühé, Ivory Coast, 1923 – Abidjan, 2014) is one of the artists handled by Apart Art Advisory. He is also known as Cheik Nadro.

He was among the first Ivorians to be educated by the French colonial administration and worked for many years as a clerk in various government offices. On 11 March 1948 he had a vision that shaped all of his later work.

On more than a thousand small cards, drawn with ballpoint pens and coloured pencils, he built a personal encyclopaedia of the world: a symbolic image framed by a text that comments on it, with subjects drawn from Bété folklore, everyday life and his own visions. The drawings belong to the great cycle Connaissance du Monde (Knowledge of the World).

To transcribe the oral tradition of the Bété people he also invented a syllabary of 448 signs, the Bété alphabet. His works are held in major collections, including the Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC); in 2022 the Museum of Modern Art in New York devoted the exhibition World Unbound to him.

• 2026 – Dia Beacon, New York, from 19 December 2026 (read the article)
• 2022 – Frédéric Bruly Bouabré: World Unbound, Museum of Modern Art, New York
• 2017 – Frédéric Bruly Bouabré & Serge Attukwei Clottey, Burning in Water, New York
• 2013 – Venice Biennale
• 2012 – Inventing the world: the artist as citizen, Biennale Bénin, Cotonou
• 2010–2011 – Tate Modern, London
• 2007 – Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
• 2007 – Why Africa?, Pinacoteca Giovanni e Marella Agnelli, Turin
• 2006 – 100% Africa, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao
• 2004–2007 – Africa Remix, Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf, Hayward Gallery in London, Centre Pompidou in Paris and Mori Art Museum in Tokyo
• 2002 – Documenta 11, Kassel
• 2001–2002 – The Short Century, Munich, Berlin, Chicago and New York
• 1994 – World Envisioned, with Alighiero Boetti, Dia Center for the Arts, New York, and American Center, Paris
• 1993 – Trésor de Voyage, Venice Biennale
• 1989 – Magiciens de la Terre, Centre Georges Pompidou and Grande Halle de la Villette, Paris

Sources: Wikipedia (English and French articles on Frédéric Bruly Bouabré). Images from Wikimedia Commons, with author and licence shown under each image.