Bruce Onobrakpeya, a towering figure in modernism, in his home/studio in Lagos, Nigeria. At 91, he has his first Smithsonian solo show.
Inside the house, his studio is spread across two floors, cluttered with both recent pieces and other works that span his more than 70-year prestigious career as a painter, sculptor and pioneering printmaker.Artist Bruce Onobrakpeya stands before a wall of his artworks at his home studio in Lagos. The studio fills two floors of his three-story residence.
It was an Irish priest at St. Paul’s Catholic Cathedral in Lagos who inspired the works now on display at the Smithsonian. “I'm making us understand it in our own way rather than trying to use the idea or the imagination of other people to tell the same story,” Onobrakpeya says. “So that my own people, who have the same experience as myself, can understand it, enjoy it and use it as something to move forward.”