Onobrakpeya

Masks of the Flaming Arrows

Widely acknowledged as Africa’s master printmaker, Bruce Onobrakpeya is also a world renowned painter and sculptor, who stands in the vanguard of the first generation of contemporary artists who were educated in colonial Nigeria, but who set the pace and standards for innovation and professionalism in a new, post-colonial space. He has exhibited at Tate Modern, London, the National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C., and at the Malmö Konsthall, Sweden.

In this unprecedented volume an astonishing array of sumptuous colour and black-and-white reproductions of drawings, paintings, prints, and installations by Bruce Onobrakpeya are accompanied by insightful and critical texts by scholars and students of Nigerian art. The full breadth of his more than five-decade career is represented with numerous examples of the many experimental painting, printmaking, and sculptural relief techniques that the artist has pioneered, including plastocasts and additive plastographs, and his diptilinen and triptilinen canvas treatments. A comprehensive time line details Onobrakpeya’s creative and professional activities from his first solo exhibition at Ughelli in 1959 to his ongoing harmattan workshops held annually in Agbarha-Otor, his hometown. Interviews, incisive essays, an artist’s statement, and poems provide important context for this significant body of work.

Dele Jegede is a noted art historian, painter, cartoonist, art critic, and art administrator. He is also a professor of art at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio.