The Richly Textured Work of Kaloki Nyamai

One of the highlights of Venice Biennale 2026 was the work of Kenyan artist Kaloki Nyamai (b. 1985).

 

Nyamai’s father wanted him to study engineering, his mother encouraged him to pursue an art career. Nyamai followed his dream and studied Industrial Design at the Buruburu Institute of Fine Arts in Nairobi.

 

 

It was the stories that his grandmother told him that gave him the social and historical context for his works. Nyamai said that she wrote and performed songs about the conflicts of people in her village, which made some of her neighbors fear her.  When Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president visited the village, his grandmother gave a public performance and was arrested and interrogated as a suspected political dissident. She was eventually released, but never performed publicly again. 

 

What makes Nyamai’s work so distinctive is his use of deep layers of acrylic paints, newspaper and sisal, to create intriguing, textured surfaces. He likes to work on large-scale paintings. The Untitled work, available at Surovek Gallery, is  89 x 79 inches and contains all the elements that Nyamai likes to bring to his works.

 

Nyamai has been so successful that he was recently able to build a studio in Nairobi, where he paints and encourages other artists and community members to visit and work with him.

 

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Alex Katz celebrated his 99th birthday last month. He was born in Brooklyn on July 24, 1927, attended Cooper Union from 1946 to 1949, then spent a year at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.

 

Katz has painted his friends, his family and the world around him for more than seven decades. He has ignored art critics who scorned him for not embracing Abstract Expressionism or Pop Art. But Alex Katz developed his own style, and it has served him well.

 

He is not only a fine artist, but he has been a generous (and under-the-radar) patron and supporter of many contemporary artists, purchasing and donating more than 700 works to museums and millions of dollars to various arts organizations.

 

 

Many of Katz’s works are part of the permanent collection of the Colby College Museum of Art in Maine, which has a wing dedicated to his work. Katz, and his wife and muse, Ada, have spent summers at their home in Lincolnville, Maine since their marriage in 1958. 

 

Katz was honored in 2023 with a retrospective at the Guggenheim and the National Medal of Arts. 

 

An upcoming solo exhibit of his work will open at the Musee Matisse in Nice in October and his work will be part of group exhibits at Musée Marmottan Monet in Paris in October, which will then travel to the Musée de Grenoble in March 2027.

 

 

Katz has been a prolific printmaker since 1965. The Albertina in Vienna, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, hold complete collections of Katz's print oeuvre. The Albertina released a print catalogue raisonné in 2011.

 

Alex Katz still lives and works in the SoHo building that he bought with other artists in 1968.

Please contact us if you would like more information about the work of Kaloki Nyamai and Alex Katz available at Surovek Gallery.

 

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August 20, 2026