Légende 'Lekagnon'

The unique art collection Légende by Frédéric Bruly Bouabré is an exceptional series of 30 original drawings (13 x 17 cm each) that exemplifies the artist’s signature style—naïve yet deeply symbolic, colorful, and meticulously structured.

Created on repurposed cardboard, each work is rendered in ballpoint pen and colored pencil, adhering to Bouabré’s characteristic visual language.

The collection forms a cohesive narrative.

Every drawing is hand-signed on the reverse side and numbered from 1 to 30, ensuring that the sequence is read in the correct order, reinforcing Bouabré’s storytelling intent. This structured approach not only enhances the narrative depth of the series but also reflects his broader mission of using art as a vehicle for knowledge transmission.

This collection of thirty drawings unfolds as a vivid visual epic by Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, narrating the mythic journey of Lekagnon — a tale of birth, initiation, and return deeply rooted in Bété oral tradition. Executed in Bouabré’s unmistakable style, each small card combines a hand-colored, line-drawn image with surrounding text that frames the story like both caption and incantation. The sequence begins with scenes of gestation and birth, evoking the cosmic and human origins of life, then moves through depictions of everyday customs, forest hunts, spiritual encounters, and moral trials. Along the way, Lekagnon confronts the unknown — from dense wilderness to horned hybrid beings — before emerging transformed and reconciled with his ancestral home. The series captures Bouabré’s unique synthesis of ethnography, philosophy, and storytelling, where the intimate and the universal coexist. With their naïve formalism, luminous colors, and rhythmic script, these drawings transform an oral legend into a timeless written-visual archive of memory and moral reflection.

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La Légende, 30 original drawings on cardboard, hand signed by Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, 1999