Abu Dhabi Art: The Osogbo School

kó is pleased to participate in Abu Dhabi Art 2025, featuring a group presentation of pioneering modern artists of Nigeria’s Osogbo School. The Osogbo School was a movement that emerged in the early 1960s at the dawn of Nigeria’s independence when a new cultural confidence fused indigenous traditions with contemporary forms. Bringing together key works from the 1960s-1990s, this presentation includes Jimoh Buraimoh, Adebisi Fabunmi, Rufus Ogundele, Muraina Oyelami, and Twins Seven-Seven. This presentation is featured in the Focus: Nigeria Spotlight at Abu Dhabi Art. 

The Osogbo Art School, as it came to be known, developed informally from the restless creative energy of the post-independence era in Nigeria. The movement grew at a time when Osogbo, a small Yoruba town, was becoming a vibrant counter-cultural center. The Osogbo School emerged from a series of experimental art workshops held between 1962–1966 at Mbari Mbayo, an informal club formed to promote theatre and visual art, in collaboration with several international artists and intellectuals living in Osogbo at the time: German professor Ulli Beier, British artist Georgina Betts Beier, Nigerian playwright Duro Ladipo, and Austrian artist Susanne Wenger. The workshops provided participants with materials, studio space, and mentorship that encouraged individual expression over academic instruction. These artists all participated in the theatre troupe of Duro Ladipo and developed their visual arts practice alongside their performative work.

Largely outside formal art-school training, the artists forged highly original approaches to painting, printmaking, textile, and mixed media, drawing on Yoruba mythology, performance, and modern life. From this setting arose a generation of artists who developed distinct personal styles while retaining a cohesive visual language rooted in Yoruba culture.

After their international debut in 1965, the artists of the Osogbo School had a meteoric rise to global art stardom. They exhibited extensively throughout Europe, Britain, and the United States over the next three decades, participated in numerous residences and fellowships, and were included in landmark exhibitions of contemporary African art. The artists of the Osogbo School became some of the most visible African artists on the international stage. 

This presentation follows Nike Davies-Okundaye's site-specific installation at Al Ain Oasis, UAE unveiled in November 2025, commissioned by Abu Dhabi Art and the Department for Culture and Tourism, Abu Dhabi. In Al Ain, Nike has created a monumental batik installation that ties the history of palm cultivation in Al Ain and Osogbo, Nigeria. Although Nike Davies-Okundaye was not a formal participant in the Mbari Mbayo Art Workshops, she has become one of the most celebrated figures associated with the Osogbo Art School and a pioneering force in preserving and elevating Nigeria’s textile traditions. At a time when the Osogbo movement was largely a “man’s club,” Nike emerged as its central female voice, both artistically and institutionally, deeply intertwined with Osogbo’s creative community. Today, Nike Art Gallery in Lagos stands as the largest art gallery in Africa. A leading voice of the Osogbo legacy, Nike continues to uphold its experimental ethos through four art centers across Nigeria, where she trains and empowers young women in traditional textile and craft practices. 

Nike’s installation, The Market Square (2025), consists of two monumental indigo-dyed cloths produced through the wax-resist method. The compositions depict rhythmic rows of palm trees, their trunks rising into dense foliage. Around these forms, ghostly faces and abstracted figures emerge, suggesting the mystery of a sacred forest. The wax-resist technique leaves gestural brush strokes and subtle crackling of the indigo. The title refers to the market square, typically busy, noisy, and crowded with sights, sounds, and smells, and Nike draws an analogy between this vibrant scene and the sacred forest she depicts—both places filled with many presences and energies.