Atta Kwami was a painter and printmaker, whose work examines architecture and West African woven textiles alongside wider themes of migration, acceptance, assimilation and acculturation. He trained and taught at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana and in the UK, where he was a Visiting Fellow on the Cambridge/Africa Collaborative Research Programme, Art and Museums in Africa, 2012–13.
As an art historian, he is the author of Kumasi Realism, 1951–2007: An African Modernism (HURST, 2013). His work has been exhibited widely and appears in major collections including National Museum of Ghana, Accra; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Abidjan; the V&A Museum, London; the National Museum of African Art, Washington, D.C.; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Newark Museum, Newark; The Chazen Museum, University of Wisconsin-Madison; University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor; Liverpool World Museum, Liverpool; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago and the British Museum, London.