Nigerian folk artist featured in Grove City College gallery
Grove City College’s Pew Fine Arts Center Gallery will feature the work of an internationally acclaimed Nigerian artist.
Art by Bruce Onobrakpeya, as well as folk art from East and West Africa, will be featured in the gallery, 10 Hicks Drive, Grove City, through Oct. 14.
Onobrakpeya, a printmaker, painter and sculptor, is one of the most successful artists to emerge from West Africa in the 20th Century and a commanding influence on artists in Africa and around the world in the post-colonial period.
His works have exhibited at the Tate Modern Museum in London, National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., Malmo Konsthall in Sweden, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Lagos, and many other international venues.
Onobrakpeya’s work is complemented in the gallery with pieces of folk art from Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Benin, and across East and West Africa.
In the late 1950s, Onobrakpeya was a founding member of the famed Zaria Art Society — an art collective that developed a synthesis of traditional Nigerian forms with European techniques — and created the Bruce Onobrakpeya Foundation in 1990.
The foundation is an artist-led non-governmental organization that encourages art and culture by providing artists with opportunities to develop and increasing public awareness of African art and its benefits to society, said a news release from the college.
The gallery is open from 4 to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday, and 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturdays.
