Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, also known as Cheik Nadro (11 March 1923 – 28 January 2014).
Bouabré was born in Zépréguhé, and was among the first Ivorians to be educated by the French colonial government.
On March 11, 1948, he received a vision, which directly influenced much of his later work. Bouabré created many of his hundreds of small drawings while working as a clerk in various government offices. These drawings depict many different subjects, mostly drawn from local folklore; some also describe his own visions.
All the drawings are part of a larger cycle, titled World Knowledge. Bouabré also created a 448-letter, universal Bété syllabary, which he used to transcribe the oral tradition of his people, the Bétés.
His visual language is portrayed on some 1,000 small cards using ballpoint pens and crayons, with symbolic imagery surrounded by text, each carrying a unique divinatory message and comments on life and history.
Many of Bouabré’s drawings are in The Contemporary African Art Collection (CAAC) of Meshac Gaba. One of his emblematic drawings is saved in the L’appartement 22 collection on the African continent: “Une divine peinture relevée sur le corps d’une mandarine jaunie”, made by Bouabré in 1994 in Abidjan.
