Bruce Obomeyoma

Biography

"Professor Bruce Onobrakpeya is amongst the most successful artists to have emerged in West Africa during the 20th century, with continuing and commanding influence on the generation of artists in Nigeria, who have come to maturity in the post colonial period." -John Picton, professor of art history and archeology, in his essay "Modernism and Modernity in African Art" Bruce Obomeyoma Onobrakpeya (born 30 August 1932) is a Nigerian printmaker, painter and sculptor. He has exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, the National Museum of African Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Malmö Konsthall in Malmö, Sweden. The National Gallery of Modern Art, Lagos, has an exhibit of colourful abstract canvases by Onobrakpeya, and his works were found at the Virtual Museum of Modern Nigerian Art. In October 1957, Onobrakpeya was admitted to the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, now the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. Funded by a Federal Government Scholarship, he was trained in the Western tradition of representational art. At the same time, he began to experiment with forms in relation to Nigerian folklore, myths and legends. Much of his work uses stylistic elements and compositions derived from traditional African sculpture and decorative arts. Professor Onobrakpeya was founding member of The Zaria Arts Society, a discussion group which would later be called the Zaria Rebels, was formed on 9 October 1958 by a group of art students at the college led by Uche Okeke, with the aim of "decolonizing" the visual arts as taught by expatriate Europeans. Onobrakpeya has said that the college gave him technical skills, but the Zaria Arts Society shaped his perspectives as a professional artist. The society gave him the confidence to seek a personal expressive idiom that would project a Nigerian identity. He elongated his figures, ignored perspective and evoked the supernatural through ambiguous decorations. Onobrakpeya attended a series of printmaking workshops in Ibadan, Oshogbo, Ife and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Maine, US. His first one-man exhibition was held in 1959 in Ughelli in the Niger Delta. Later he exhibited in the US, Italy, Zimbabwe, Germany, Britain, Kenya and elsewhere. Onobrakpeya was an important force in the renaissance in contemporary art in Nigeria. For many years he taught at St. Gregory's College, Lagos. Prof. Onobrakpeya created the Bruce Onobrakpeya Foundation, of which he is president, and which organises the annual Harmattan workshop in his hometown of Agbara Otor, Delta State. The foundation is an artist-led non-governmental organization, formed in 1999, which aims to encourage the growth of art and culture by giving artists opportunities to gain skills, while increasing public awareness of African art and its benefits to society, the workshop runs two sessions February and August annually. The foundation organised the Amos Tutuola Show, Lagos (2000) and has participated in many other noble shows.