Colorado Ski Firm Wagner Teams Up With Rising Nigerian Artist Móyò

MILAN — As a child in tropical Nigeria, Móyòsóré Martins, the artist known as Móyò, always wondered what snow felt like. The self-taught mixed-media artist raised in Lagos by a Brazilian father and a Nigerian mother and who grew up watching the Winter Olympics in awe, said creating art for skis by Colorado firm Wagner Skis was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. “When I had the opportunity to work on those skis, it was just amazing,” he told WWD.

This is his first brand collaboration; the rising star on the art scene has been compared at times to Jean-Michel Basquiat, yet distinguished for the Nigerian diaspora narrative woven into his works. His biggest sale to date was in February, for $50,000.  The piece, “Aeon” is now worth $70,000, at 25 percent higher, his press representative said.

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Wagner said that the artist series began about eight years ago. “Being an independent brand, we’re always looking for ways to collaborate and connect with other makers and independent artists creators. That’s really the spirit of the artist series. It started with working with friends and has become working with artists all over the world,” he told WWD.

For Wagner Skis, Móyò envisaged a scene marked by bold characters with wide mouths representing audacity. “They signify how obsessed I am with this old journey. And also our one shouldn’t be too comfortable when they find success,” the artist added.

Investor and art collector Asher Edelman is one of his top collectors, endeared to Móyò’s grunge aesthetic that is visually captivating both in the physical and digital worlds.

“In a lifetime of collecting, my focus has always been on painting, subject matter came later. Móyòsóré Martins is one of the most talented painters I have seen along the way. His brush strokes, the structure of his painting and his unique sense of color and mood is extraordinary,” said Edelman of Móyò’s work in an emailed statement. Edelman founded FAE Musée d’Art Contemporain in 1988, a contemporary art museum in Pully, Switzerland, and which launched the first European retrospective exhibitions of American artists Roy Lichtenstein, Peter Halley, American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and Basquiat.

Peter Wagner, founder of Wagner Skis, told WWD the upscale skis will retail at $3,000 and will go on sale Tuesday both online and in stores.

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