A SEMINAR ON YORUBA ARTISTS IN NIGERIA

AN ASSIGNMENT ON

FAA447: SEMINARS IN ART HISTORY

BY

OYENIRAN BOLUWATIFE IROYINAYO

FNA/2016/051

SUBMITTED TO

DEPARTMENT OF FINE AND APPLIED ARTS

OBAFEMI AWOLOWO UNIVERSITY

DR MICHAEL FAJUYIGBE
LECTURER IN CHARGE

MAY, 2021
Abayomi Barber

Abayomi Barber Portrait, Isimi Taiwo, From the collection of: The centenary project

Biography
Born in 1928 in Ile Ife, Osun State Nigeria, Abayomi Barber is one of Nigeria’s renowned artists. He is
a painter, sculptor, graphic designer and teacher. Barber has created some of the most captivating
landscapes in Nigerian art. Abayomi is known mainly for his surrealist landscapes, as well as
impressive oeuvre of sculptural pieces. He started his education at St Peter's Anglican School, Iremo,
Ife. He finished his education at St Stephen's School, Modakeke, Ife in 1948. In 1949, he produced a
carving on a wooden box and then participated in various art competitions during the same year. He
gained recognition in Lagos when he won the Elder Dempster sponsored Lines Silver Cup for the best
painting exhibited at the All Nigeria Festival of the Arts in 1952. After the prize, he was commissioned
to create a portrait of Harold Cooper, the outgoing Ikoyi club president. He found employment in
Lagos in the early 1950s as a graphic artist producing book and advertisement illustrations and comic
drawings for the Nigerian advertiser located in Yaba, Lagos. In 1955, he briefly enrolled in a sculptor
program at Yaba College Of Technology under the direction of British sculptor Paul Mount. In 1957, he
was introduced to Awolowo, then the premier of the Western Nigeria region by his uncle, Adesoji
Aderemi; with Awolowo's contacts, he joined the Yoruba Historical Research Scheme on a research
project tracing the origin of the Yoruba people. His work as a project assistant in the research scheme
gave him the opportunity to work with notable scholars such as Saburi Biobaku, William Fagg, Frank
Willet and Dr Bradburty.

From 1960 to 1962, with a scholarship from the regional government, he studied at the Central School
of Arts and Crafts, London. He went to London to study the preservation and restoration of antiquities
and to work on developing a stature of Obafemi Awolowo. However, a regional crisis engulfed the
region and his scholarship was terminated. While in England, he continued to develop his craft, he
studied casting and molding at Mancini and Tozer studios, London, he also worked as an assistant at an
art studio owned by Edward Delaney and later at Oscar Nemon’s studio in St James studio in London.
He worked with Nemon on five sculptors of Winston Churchill. He was also an assistant at the British
Museum.
In 1971, he returned to lecture at the University of Lagos and When he returned to Nigeria, Barber was
not pleased with what he viewed as the primitivism and expressionism that dominated the Nigerian art
scene at the time. He believed that authentic creativity in the work of a genuine artist comes only
through attention to skill and materials and sincerity of practice. Then he became the guiding light and
mentor for an informal afro-surrealist school of art, known as the Barber School, which aims at
resolving the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality through visual artworks and
paintings. He started the informal training school in 1973, with Muri Adejimi as his first student in his
studio at the university. Barber is said to have a stint with the Ori Olokun factor, an art and cultural
activist group that emerged at the former University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo
University.) Ori-Olokun is a cultural treasure lost during the ancient wars of conquest, but reportedly
recovered in 1910 in Ile-Ife, the cradle of Yoruba race, by a group of archaeologists, led by a German
explorer, Leo Frobenius.

He began painting and sculpting at an early age and was inspired by nature and the Ife figurines that
were all around him. In recent times, he has been known more for his paintings than for his sculptures.
His surrealistic artworks have become famous for their inventive hyperrealism, exploring as they do the
multi-dimensionality of life and rendering landscapes in new interesting ways.

Yet, Barber was a sculptor first and foremost. Many of his early pieces were sculptures. His first
commission by the government of the Western Region was for a sculpture. In England in the 1960s he
worked for many years as a sculptor. While his canvases may have become more popular in recent
years, in his sculptures one can discover Barber’s exacting hand and mind, his ability to explore the
contours of the human form, and his storytelling. In his sculptures he tells stories about people and life
in a way that’s very different from what he is able to convey on canvas. Barber had his first solo
exhibition in 1989, the title of the exhibition was Abayomi Barber A Retrospective. Some of his works
are on display at the National Gallery of Modern Art including sculptures of Ali Maigoro and Yemoja.

His Art Works

Ali Maigoro

Ali Maigoro, 1972, Height 5.5” width 4”

The idea for ‘Ali Maigoro’ would not on the face of if have seemed like a certainty for a successful
sculpture. It is, after all, the bust of a somewhat unattractive, weather beaten man with missing teeth.
Probably not the most attractive notion for a sculpture. But then you add the infectious grin, the hint of
mischief, the wrinkle around his eyes from years of laughter, and you get something entirely different;
something charming, honest and endearing. It’s the sort of sculpture that means different things to
different people. When the then President of Nigeria, Yakubu Gowon, saw a version of the sculpture at
an exhibition organized by the National Gallery, he was fascinated by it, but also worried that it seemed
to give the wrong impression of the North as illiterate and uncivilized. This, for him, was an
uncomfortable dilemma. The wizened old Northern man evoked joy, but also at least, in his eyes, a
certain crudeness.

For Barber, the idea of Ali Maigoro may have been like a blanket on a chilly night. Homesick in
London in the early sixties, he fantasized about Nigeria - the peace, the simple life, the people, the
warmth. He decided to create a sculpture to capture these feelings of warmth and simplicity. This
became Ali Maigoro (an invented name). The old northern man with the missing teeth, the warm smile
and the wise eyes became for him a symbol of the Nigeria he missed. He would go on to do several
versions of ‘Ali Maigoro’ over the years. This one, completed in 1972 upon his return to Nigeria, is the
smallest version, capturing the charm of the old man’s face in a calm, understated way.
B’anu

B’anu, 1967, Height 10” width 6.5”

Many artists find their inspiration in the people around them - children, wives, friends, lovers. Some of
Barber’s most remarkable sculptures and drawings from his time in London were inspired by the young
women he associated with - his friends, his lovers and eventually, his wife.

Barber met B’anu in the late fifties, in Ife. He was fascinated by her beauty. And equally fascinated by
the beauty of B’anu’s mother, who he thought was one of the most beautiful women he had ever met.
He developed a close relationship with B’anu and while he never got to create an artwork of her mother,
he would create several artworks of B’anu.

This sculpture was created in England in 1967, where they met again as friends. The sculpture is on
some level a combination of several things. There is the model, B’anu. it’s a representation of her.
There is also the homage to the British sculptor, Oscar Nemon, in whose studio Barber worked at the
time. The sculpture mimicked Nemon’s semi-cubist style of portraiture, with its affection for angular
edges. It’s also a tribute to Ife women in general, bearing an interesting resemblance to earlier
examples of Ife female busts. It is part portraiture, part history, part homage, and in the same way as
Ali Maigoro, part nostalgia.
Toyin Ojih Odutola

www.interviewmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/...

Biography
Toyin Ojih Odutola was born in 1985 in ile-Ife, Nigeria, where both her parents were teachers. In 1990
her mother, Nelene Ojih, took Toyin and her two-year-old brother to the United States to accompany
their father, Dr. J. Ade Odutola, in Berkeley, California, where he was undergoing research and
teaching chemistry at the university. After four years in Berkeley, the family moved to Huntsville,
Alabama in 1994 where her father became a professor at Alabama A&M university and her mother a
nurse. Ojih Odutola is of Yoruba and Igbo descent from her paternal and maternal heritage,
respectively. In 2007, while an undergraduate, she participated in the Norfolk Summer Residency for
Music & Art, from Yale university in Connecticut. Shortly after in 2008, she received a Bachelor of Art
degree in Studio Art and Communications from the University Of Alabama In Huntsville. In 2012, she
earned a Master of Fine Art degree from California College of the Art, in San Francisco.

While studying at California College of Arts in San Francisco, she presented her first solo show in New
York, "(MAPS)" at Jack Shainman Gallery in 2011. It was composed of a collection of individual black
figures in decontextualized white backgrounds drawn in layers with a ballpoint pen. The ideas behind
this series of skin as geography introduced her as a new voice in the visual representation of black skin.
Forbes featured Ojih Odutola in its 2012 list of 30 notable individuals under 30 in the category "Art &
Style."

In 2015, her solo museum exhibition, "Untold Stories," at the Contemporary Art Museum St Louis,
introduced storytelling and text into her work, marking a shift in her studio practice.

In 2016, she presented "A Matter of Fact," a solo exhibition at the Museum of the African Diaspora, in
San Francisco, exploring a new style of works she developed during her residency at Headlands Center
for the Arts, in Sausalito, California.

Her work was the featured cover story for Juxtapoz Magazine in November 2017, on the occasion of
her museum solo exhibition, "To Wander Determined," at Whitney Museum of America Art, in New
York. The exhibition presented a vibrant series of figures connected by a fictional narrative of two
aristocratic Nigerian dynasties, who are joined by the union of titled sons from both families. Ojih
Odutola introduces the portraits as the private collection from these families, which are of different
upper-class origins unencumbered by the history of colonialism. The premise behind the portraits being
fictional invites the audience to decipher the truth behind them.

Her Work
Toyin Ojih Odutola is best known for her detailed portrait drawings, entirely or primarily done in black
pen ink. Her more recent work has expanded to include charcoal, pastel, chalk, and pencil. However,
the artist does not consider herself a portraitist; the subjects of her drawings are actually drawn from
many different people. Through black ballpoint pen ink, Toyin Odutola’s drawings question physical
and sociopolitical identities as they pertain to skin color. Treating skin as topography, she layers ink as
a means of mapping a person’s subjective, individual geography built from real-life experiences. Her
interest in surface qualities stems from the history of African textiles, which inspires the artist’s rich
textures on flat planes. Concerned with historical representations of black subjects in portraiture,
Odutola undermines notions of blackness in her drawings by exploring what it means to look or be
perceived as black, as, while drawn in black ink, not all of her subjects are of African descent. More
recently, Odutola has begun to look beyond pen ink, working with charcoal and pastels to reflect the
cultural diversity and ambition of American cities.

Confidence-Building. (71 1/8 × 47 5/8 × 2 1/4 framed), charcoal, pastel and pencil on paper, 2016

She credits her high school art teacher, Dana Bathurst, for introducing her to African-American
portraiture artists such as Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Romare Bearden and Berkeley L.
Hendricks. Ojih Odutola has also received inspiration and influence from comic books, Japanese
manga, and anime. Additionally, studying the works of contemporary artists like Kerry James
Marshall, Wangechi Mutu, and Julie Mehretu had an impact while she was in graduate school.

Ojih Odutola's work is often viewed as challenging the many traditional notions about social and
political identity as well as the framework of which it is defined. Her work is an intentional means of
translating those narratives about race, identity, and class visually. This is done through the mediums
and surfaces she uses as well as the textures conveyed in the figures and landscapes she portrays in her
detailed drawings. For Ojih Odutola, the texture is a form of communication and language with the
viewer. The various marks she creates represent a kind of dialect and accent.
References
1. Odiboh, Freeborn. "The Crisis Of Appropriating Identity For African Art And Artists". Gefame.
vol. 2, no. 1. Ann Arbor, MI: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library. Retrieved August 24, 2015.

2. Anonyuo, E. G. (January 01, 1999). Microanalysis of Skokian works of art. Nigerian Skokian Art: a
Microanalysis of the Realistic Visual Expression in Contemporary Nigerian Art, 69-107.

3. Odiboh, Freeborn. "Creative Reformation of African Art Traditions: The Iconography of Abayomi
Barber Art School". African Arts Vol. 42, No. 2, MIT Press. Retrieved August 24, 2015.

4. "ABAYOMI BARBER - a Nigerian "Genius" whose mastery of his Art challenges the British Art
History - The Hourglass Gallery". The Hourglass Gallery.

5. Anonyuo. P 81-83

6. Toyin Ojih Odutola". Artnet. Retrieved 5 July 2020

7. Morse, Trent (2014-01-08). "Making Cutting-Edge Art with Ballpoint Pens". ARTnews.
Retrieved 2017-09-29.

8. Sydney Gove (2017-02-26). "Toyin Ojih Odutola Uses Art To Challenge Invented Constructs Of The
Self". NYLON. Retrieved 2017-09-29.

9. Fallon, Claire (2015-12-09). "Stunning Ballpoint Imagery Explores Blackness And The Power Of
Ink". Huffington Post. Retrieved 2017-09-29.

10. Kazanjian, Dodie. "Reimagining Black Experience in the Radical Drawings of Toyin Ojih
Odutola". Vogue. Retrieved 5 July 2020.

11. "Yale Norfolk School of Art". Norfolk-Yale School of Art. Retrieved 5 July 2020.

12. "Ojih Odutola Biography", Jack Shainman Gallery, Retrieved 25 November 2018.