Maurice Mboa

Cameroonian-born painter Maurice Mboa lives and works in Geneva where he has developed a singular visual language that bridges memory, spirituality, and material experimentation. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Mbalmayo, Mboa combines traditional painting techniques with metal engraving on recycled steel sheets, creating surfaces that are both sculptural and painterly. His signature figures—faceless, anthropomorphic forms he calls Âmes-preintes (“soulprints”)—emerge from biomorphic, organic patterns, producing compositions that are at once tactile, luminous, and meditative. These works evoke inner life and collective memory, transforming metal into a vessel for the unseen and the spiritual.

Mboa’s practice is deeply rooted in his Cameroonian heritage and the spiritual knowledge passed down by his grandmother, a traditional healer. His work explores themes of identity, belonging, and the interplay between the visible and invisible, drawing on personal experience navigating multiple cultures. By layering engraved and painted textures, he creates a dialogue between the material and the immaterial, highlighting the tensions between body and soul. Each painting resonates with both cultural memory and a broader, almost universal, human introspection, offering viewers an invitation to reflect on presence, ancestry, and transcendence.

His work has been exhibited widely, including solo shows at Pace Gallery, Geneva, Tiger Gallery, London, and the Nassima Landau Art Foundation, Tel Aviv, and has appeared in numerous group exhibitions across Europe and beyond. Mboa’s innovative use of steel as a canvas, combined with his meditative approach to form and symbolism, positions him as a unique voice in contemporary African and global art. Across his oeuvre, he continues to explore the poetic possibilities of material, the spiritual resonance of form, and the layered complexity of human experience.

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