www.smithsonianmag.com:
The work, a larger than life sculpture called "Toussaint Louverture and the Elderly Slave" by Sow, a Senegalese artist, towers at the entrance to the exhibit. Louverture (1743-1804) was a Haitian slave who led the Haitian uprising against French colonial rule around the turn of the 18th century. He is widely considered the great liberator of the Haitian people.
Sow, who moved from Senegal to Paris as a young man, created the sculpture in 1989 as part of a three-work series to commemorate the bicentennial of the French Revolution. Each work in the series depicts a hero to liberty, some are French and others, such as the Louverture are colonial subjects who rebelled against the French.

www.africa.si.edu:
Ousmane Sow's "Toussaint Louverture et la Vieille Esclave" is the focal point of "African Mosaic: Celebrating a Decade of Collecting" at the National Museum of African Art.

www.washingtonpost.com:
The centerpiece of the show - the anchor, if you will - greets visitors at the door. That's where you'll find Ousmane Sow's "Toussaint Louverture et la Vieille Esclave" ("Toussaint Louverture and the Elderly Slave"). Made on the occasion of the 1989 bicentennial of the French Revolution, the monumental double portrait of the Haitian liberator holding the hand of a cowering woman is a show-stopper: a balance between power and tenderness; history and contemporary engagement with the themes of worldwide freedom and equality.
It's also reason alone for a visit.
Museum director Johnnetta Cole predicts that the Senegalese artist's masterwork - acquired last year in what curator Christine Kreamer calls a "heart-pounding" auction drama - will become "the destination work" of the museum. Cole likens it to a contemporary "Mona Lisa," saying that visitors will come to the African art museum, as they do at the Louvre, and ask "Where is he?"
She may be right.
The piece, which appears to be made of roughly spackled and painted mud and burlap, will likely stay on long-term view, even after "African Mosaic" comes down. Though it almost certainly doesn't represent what Louverture actually looked like - there are no portraits of him from the time he lived (1743-1803) - it's a strong and vital statement of the museum's core mission, which is to link the traditional art of Africa with the art of today.
Like many of the works in "African Mosaic," Sow's sculpture looks at once old and new, battle-scarred and fresh. Play a little game with yourself as you wander through the show: Try and guess when something was made, before looking at the wall label.
It's harder than you think. That's not an indication that this place is a mausoleum. Rather, it's a measure of how little difference there is between what's lasting and what's living.
Philosopher Alan Watts once opined that museums were places "where art goes to die." The National Museum of African Art, for one, would like to prove that's not true.
"African Mosaic: Celebrating a Decade of Collecting" showcases more than 100 objects that have been added to the museum's permanent collection in recent years. They range from a 15th-century Ethiopian Bible illustration of King David playing a harp - a rare example of a single manuscript page from the museum's vaults, as curators don't like to encourage the cannibalization of old books - to a 2007 coffin in the shape of a Nokia cell phone, by Ghanaian woodworker Samuel Nartey. (Such customized "fantasy" coffins have been popular in that country since the 1950s. There's another, in the shape of an elephant, in the show. Though somewhat ghoulish, they're also whimsically engaged with living culture.)
What the show does best is to help viewers learn to "read" the vast mosaic of African art and to recognize common themes, aesthetics and meanings that transcend era, material and country of origin. Take Senegalese artist Moustapha Dime's "Femme Serer" ("Serer Woman"). The 1992 figurative sculpture is an abstraction of the female form, with breasts suggested by wooden bowls, and the curve of the torso and hips evoked by a mortar and pestle. Nearby, you'll see those shapes echoed in two functional ceramic objects from Nigeria. Both look like rounded water pitchers, but only one would have been used to carry liquids. The other is actually a percussion instrument.

www.canalacademies.com:
His hands are already born men and women from Africa, the Indians of America. Inspired by the memory of his father, the artist has decided to undertake a new series of sculptures representing those who have helped him not to despair of the human race. Its great men call Victor Hugo, Nelson Mandela, the General De Gaulle, mahatma Gandhi, Moctar Sow ... Ousmane Sow live these heroes, illustrious, unknown or anonymous history by his giant sculptures, bronzes, colorful, mixed forces, far from the monumental and the glory, for better help us to see the greatness of soul.
Sculptures by Ousmane Sow in his Parisian house, in the foreground L'Immigré, then Nuba, and in the background, Victor Hugo, November 14, 2009.
In 2002, at the request of Médecins du Monde, for the Day of the refusal of the exclusion and poverty, Ousmane Sow created a large sculpture of the poet Victor Hugo, of which he produced a bronze commissioned and installed in 2003 by the municipality of Besançon, the birthplace of the great writer. He represented him looking at his pocket watch in the clothes of Jean Valjean, the hero of Les Misérables, about whom Victor Hugo "Jean Valjean is the ant that the social law crushes". The sculptor still remembers the poem After the battle: "My father, this hero with such a sweet smile ..." which he learned as a child and has sincere admiration for the writer.
Traduction
De ses mains, sont déjà nés des hommes et des femmes d’Afrique, des Indiens d’Amérique. Inspiré par le souvenir de son père, l’artiste a décidé d’entreprendre une nouvelle série de sculptures représentant ceux qui l’ont aidé à ne pas désespérer du genre humain. Ses grands hommes s’appellent Victor Hugo, Nelson Mandela, le Général De Gaulle, Gandhi, Moctar Sow ... Ousmane Sow fait vivre ces héros, figures illustres, méconnues ou anonymes de l’histoire par ses sculptures géantes, grands bronzes colorés, métissés de forces, loin du monumental et de la gloire pour mieux nous aider à en voir la grandeur d’âme.
Sculptures d’Ousmane Sow dans sa maison parisienne, au premier plan L’Immigré, puis Nuba, et en arrière plan, Victor Hugo, 14 novembre 2009.
En 2002, à la demande de Médecins du Monde, pour la Journée du refus de l'exclusion et de la misère, Ousmane Sowdont il réalisé un bronze commandé et installé en 2003 par la municipalité de Besançon, ville natale du grand écrivain. Il l'a représenté regardant sa montre à gousset dans les habits de Jean Valjean, le héros des Misérables, à propos duquel Victor H""Jean Valjean est la fourmi que la loi sociale écras"". Le sculpteur se souvient encore du poème Après la bataille : «Mon père , ce héros au sourire si doux...» qu'il a appris enfant et voue à l'écrivain une sincère admiration.

www-parismatch-com:
Figure de l'art africain contemporain, le sculpteur sénégalais Ousmane Sow est mort tôt jeudi à Dakar à l'âge de 81 ans, a annoncé sa f"Il emporte avec lui rêves et projets que son organisme trop fatigué n'a pas voulu suiv", a souligné sa famille, précisant qu'il avait fait ces derniers mois plusieurs séjours à l'hôpital à Paris et à Dakar.
Ousmane Sow Introduit À L'Académie Des Beaux arts Par François Hollande, Lors D’un Cérémonie À L’Elysée En Décembre 2013 2.
Translate
Figure of contemporary African art, Senegalese sculptor Ousmane Sow died early Thursday in Dakar at the age of 81, hi""He takes with him dreams and projects that his too tired body did not want to follow,"" said his family, adding that he had made several hospital stays in Paris and Dakar in recent months.
Ousmane Sow Introduced To The Academy Of Fine Arts By François Hollande, During A Ceremony At The Elysee Palace In December 2013 2.

www.ousmanesow.com: As if driven to return to the very source, to the origins and development of African art, Ousmane Sow's work might well appear to be a contemporary digest, an exaggerated vision of a long forgotten history. Following the example of the first ancient and classical art of the African continent - the large, terracotta figurative statues of the Nok culture of Nigeria, as mute and as hallucinated as the Easter Island statues - Ousmane Sow began by kneading the earth. A new creative force seeking to build up an improbable army of the shadows, Sow raised his Golem warriors by perfecting an alchemist's mixture of his own concoction. His esthetic of secrecy corresponded exactly with his esthetic of initiation.
How can you think of reproduction when yo are striving to produce? Transmutation into bronze - completely hypothetical at that moment - would have been considered as a vulgar and flashy transformation of clay into gold.
It's a mistake to attribute to primary works of art an originality that cannot be reproduced.
We know that as early as the 11th century the ancient Ife civilization in the Yoruba lands, in the south-west of modern Nigeria had discovered how to cast, having already achieved remarkable mastery of terracotta modeling.
But the experiment would have soon ended if the artist had not discovered, first with fascination, then astonishment and emotion, a regeneration and a real metamorphosis in his work. As we know, in the end replicants always escape from their creator…
For his first three bronzes, Ousmane Sow immediately turned to his earliest works: Dancer with Short Hair and the Standing Wrestler from the Nuba series, an"Mother and Child" from the Masai series. Perhaps the most brutal, in any case the most nude and undeniably the most alive, even though they remain imbued with a sense of moderation, restraint and self control that we associate with the Yoruba and the Fulani.
In the remote Kordofan region, in the south of Sudan, where the Nuba survive and still live, young virgins dance the myertum, the ""dance of love"". They move closer and closer to the victorious wrestlers, who sit in a circle their eyes lowered, after the annual ceremonial combat. They smear their bodies with black or red earth to make them more athletic and desirable. Only bronze, with its dark, shimmering patina, could recreate the initial erotic gleam of the Dancer with Short Hair, her oblique, hollowed highlights, her supple, animal power. With the Standing Wrestler the bronze makes him stronger, stockier, more concentrated, more violent. He's certainly less human, standing there, one solid block, like a god, a force in motion. The mask he has skillfully painted on his face to frighten his opponents - here etched in green acid in the very flesh of the bronze - acquires a virulence that is closer to actual Nuba war paint, made from charcoal dust and crushed shell.
Contrary to the original human creations, they demand a resurrection of the flesh, a touch of eternity as opposed to a rotting straw...
And the mother breastfeeding her child with her dress and clothing melting into the flesh is here transformed into Maternity. Emerging like a lotus flower from the folds of clothing, colored warm ochre by nitrates, the young woman's head, shaven, smooth and burnt dark by the sun, takes on a Buddha-like grace. Her feet, however, deformed as in Picasso's cubist manner, coarsely hacked as Baselitz might have done, remind us in an immediate, clear and perceptible fashion of the wounds and shocks that African feet suffer from their endless walking.
Ousmane Sow is certainly not the first to color his bronzes. Giacometti and Germaine Richter experimented with it before him, but as a game, a fad, a whim, rarely out of necessity. For the Senegalese, Sow, bronze is inconceivable without color, which is its mask, its interior adornment.
With Ousmane Sow, it's the Africa of bronze and gold, proud and heroic, that comes to life under a beating sun.
Text: Emmanuel Daydé

www.wikipedia.org:
Ousmane Sow (10 October 1935 – 1 December 2016) wasSenegalese sculptor of larger-than-life statues of people and groups of people.
ow was born in Dakar, Senegal, on 10 October 1935. After the death of his father in 1956, he left Dakar to study in France, where he obtained a diploma in physiotherapy. He returned to Senegal after it became independent in 1960 and started a practice in physiotherapy. He later went back to France and practised there, but returned to Senegal in 1978. He died in Dakar on 1 December 2016 at the age of 81.
Sow was inspired by photographs by Leni Riefenstahl of the Nuba peoples of southern Sudan, and from 1984 began to work on a series of larger-than-life sculptures of muscular Nuba wrestlers. To make them, he developed a series of new techniques and materials. They were shown at the Centre Culturel Français de Dakar in 1987. Sow later made series of sculptures of Maasai people, of Zulu people, of Peul or Fulani people, and, in the late 1990s, of Native Americans.

www.rbb85.wordpress.com:
In 2008 Sow was honored ith a Prince Claus Award from the Netherlands in the theme Culture and the human body.