Art in aid of missionaries
Don Lido Lodolini in Burkina Faso and Father Ambrogio Grassi in Togo
Joseph Amedokpo is a Togolese painter who is well known in his homeland.
In Togo, where he has been living since 1974, the Italian Combonian Father Ambrogio Grassi wanted to build a water depot in a village in the parish of Akumape where there are no pipelines to bring drinking water to its inhabitants.
To help the initiative, Amedokpo donated 29 of his canvases to Father Ambrogio so that the proceeds of the sale in Italy would be used to finance the construction of the water depot, the total cost of which was around 8-10 thousand euro.
In carrying out the operation, Father Ambrose is helped by Don Lido Lodolini and his non-profit organisation ‘Nasara for Burkina’. And it is precisely through Don Lido that the canvases reached Milan with the intention of helping his missionary friend Father Ambrogio.
The artist and his country
Amedokpo chronicles the people of Togo
Joseph Amedokpo was born on 12 December 1946 in Vogan, a village in the south of Togo. At the age of nine, after the death of his father, he moved with his uncle to Lagos, the capital of neighbouring Nigeria, where after primary schools he devoted himself to learning the rudiments of painting, with a master class at the Yaba Trade Centre in 1966-68. In Lagos, he then worked for many years as a graphic designer.
In 1982, at the age of 36, in order to be near his elderly and ill mother, he returned to his home village to take care of her and his younger siblings, whom he looked after thanks to the proceeds from the sale of his paintings. He has not left Togo since.
Amedokpo’s is a vibrant style, where geometry and polychromy intertwine on poor canvases (usually rice bales), harmoniously crowding every possible space. With his works, Amedokpo is an incessant chronicler of his country: from the most ancestral rituals to the everyday life in the villages, from the customs of the fields to dreamlike tribal practices. A delicate symbolism, which while replicating the subjects succeeds each time in casting new nuances, unknown details, revisited colours that never tire of creating new emotions.
The SPAZIOINMOSTRA gallery
Federica, from young to top artists
The SPAZIOINMOSTRA gallery was opened by Federica Ghizzoni in June 2004. Until then, Federica, from Milan, had devoted herself to restoration for years. After studying in Milan and at the School of Advanced Studies in San Servolo, Venice, she had specialised in the restoration of gilding and polychromy on wood. SPAZIOINMOSTRA was initially a gallery dedicated to young artists, so that they would have a streamlined, lively and non-conformist structure where they could begin to make a name for themselves. In a short time, the gallery has become a point of reference in Milan for artists, even established ones, and for those who, even if they are not artists, want to live among beautiful things.
Exhibition Organising Committee (May 2008)
Silvio Cioni, Ilaria de Bernardis, Marco Santarelli, Roberto Tedeschi
From this page you can download the PDF directly from the SpazioInMostra gallery website.
Again in order to enhance Joseph Amedokpo’s paintings, Nasara for Burkina collaborated with the ‘AIPIA of Viareggio’ association and the ‘Vespa Club of Pisa’ for an exhibition of paintings held at the Fineschi Art Gallery in Camaiore (LU) from 10 to 31 May 2009
