Colour is my language: through it I take back the masterpieces of the past and make them speak of Africa.
Roberto Pare (b. 1998, Cameroon) became passionate about drawing in his earliest school years. His first contact with art took place at the lyceum, where he met the Portuguese painter Manuel, before continuing his studies at the Institut des Beaux-Arts de Foumban, one of Cameroon's historic art schools, where he obtained a professional diploma in plastic arts.
His work is defined by a skilful, exuberant use of colour, through which he enhances and foregrounds the subjects of his paintings. His early production drew on scenes of everyday life and on fashion poses taken from magazines and reworked in his hyper-coloured style. His more recent and most successful series marks an evolution toward the reinterpretation of the great masterpieces of European painting: works such as "Les Ambassadeurs" (2021), after Holbein, "The Couple" (2021), after Van Eyck's Arnolfini Portrait, and "Souvenir d'Afrique 1" and "Souvenir d'Afrique 2" (2022), which reimagine iconic female figures of the Western canon, from Tamara de Lempicka to Art Déco portraiture. Iconic images are revisited by Pare through the skilful use of colour and the inclusion of typical African elements such as wax print fabrics and tribal masks, by which he re-appropriates works now considered part of world heritage. His practice translates the logic of found-object reuse and recycling into conceptual form, so that colour and chromatic contrast become the true protagonists of the painting.
Pare's early exhibitions unfolded within the Cameroonian scene, from "Célébrer la Femme" at the Maison de la Femme, Foumban (2016), and "Restitutio" at Arts-kéo Résidences (2016-2017), to shows with the Institut des Beaux-Arts de Foumban and the Annie Kadji Gallery, Douala. In 2022 his work reached the international stage in "Cameroon: Visions and Convergences" at Black Liquid Art Gallery, curated by Antonella Pisilli, the exhibition dedicated to the new generation of Cameroonian artists born in the 1990s, which marked his European debut; he returned to the gallery in "New Vision from Old Master: African Neo-Mannerism" (Rome, 2025). His work was the subject of critical analysis by the art historian Priscilla Manfren in the peer-reviewed journal Africa e Mediterraneo (2023), which featured his painting "Souvenir d'Afrique 1" on its cover, reading his reworkings of Van Eyck and Holbein as acts of cultural re-appropriation. Since 2023 he has exhibited regularly with Mitochondria Gallery, Houston, one of the leading American galleries devoted to African and diasporic art, in group exhibitions including "When the Sun Stands Still", "Place of Repose" and "Place of Repose II", and at Arte Padova. He is regarded as one of the most promising emerging artists on the contemporary African art scene. He lives and works in Cameroon.