Kehinde Wiley: The Complete Story
A young Black man in streetwear sits astride a rearing horse, posed exactly like a king in an old royal portrait, against a backdrop of bright, swirling flowers. This is the world of Kehinde Wiley, who takes the grand poses once reserved for European rulers and gives them to the people history left out.
He is an American painter famous for heroic portraits of Black sitters in the poses of Old Master paintings, and for the official portrait of President Barack Obama.
Old poses, new sitters
Wiley studies grand historical portraits, the kings, generals and saints of European art, then casts ordinary Black men and women in those same heroic stances.
The result reworks the tradition of portrait painting, asking who gets to be painted as powerful and who has been left off the wall.
The flowers behind the figure
His backgrounds are dense, flat patterns of flowers and foliage that creep around and in front of the sitter.
The decorative field flattens the space and pushes the figure forward, a deliberate clash between rich ornament and a real, modern person, far from the dark voids of traditional history painting.
Painting a president
In 2018 Wiley unveiled the official portrait of Barack Obama for the National Portrait Gallery, showing the former president seated amid greenery and flowers.
It broke with the formal, plain backgrounds of past presidential portraits and drew huge crowds, making Wiley one of the most widely known living painters in America.
Casting from the street
Wiley often finds his sitters by street casting, approaching strangers and inviting them to choose a historical pose to recreate.
He runs large studios, including one abroad, and in 2019 unveiled Rumors of War, a giant bronze of a young Black man on horseback, designed as an answer to the Confederate monuments of the American South.
Questions readers ask about Kehinde Wiley
What is he known for?
Heroic portraits of Black sitters in Old Master poses, and the Obama portrait.
What is Rumors of War?
A large equestrian bronze answering Confederate statues.
How does he find sitters?
Often by approaching strangers on the street.
Where is he from?
Born in Los Angeles in 1977.
Why his portraits land
Wiley takes the visual language of power, built over centuries to glorify the few, and hands it to people that language ignored. When his Obama portrait went on view, the gallery saw record crowds, and the simple sight of a Black man painted like a king turned out to be one of the most quietly forceful ideas in recent art.
His studios employ assistants who help paint the intricate floral backgrounds, an open echo of the busy Old Master workshops he draws on, and Rumors of War now stands permanently in Richmond, Virginia, on the same avenue that once held the Confederate monuments it was made to answer. His Obama portrait sent visitor numbers at the National Portrait Gallery soaring, and the painting now tours the country drawing crowds in every city it visits. He has expanded his vision into stained glass, sculpture and film, and opened an artist residency in Senegal to support a new generation of Black artists from across the world. His sitters often choose their own historical pose from books he provides, making each portrait a small collaboration between the painter and a stranger he met that day on the street. His work now hangs in major museums on several continents, a long way from the street corners where he still finds many of his models.