The Nigerian visual art sector is welcoming the New Year with the sad news of the demise of Oseloka Osadebe, a retired professor of Visual Art.
Osadebe, is a founding member of the foremost Nigerian Art Movement at Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, then called Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology.
The Nigerian diaspora artist and member of the ‘Zaria Rebels’, died on December 27, 2023 in Jackson Mississippi, United States of America at 89 years.
With his death, which was disclosed by his family in Nigeria, the ‘Zaria Rebels’ are left with Demas Nwoko and Bruce Onobrakpeya, who were among the pioneers of the Zaria Arts Society, and unarguably, the fathers of the contemporary art in Nigeria.
It would be recalled that Osadebe relocated to the United States of America in 1998 and only returned in 2018 to present his body of work spanning from 1960 to 2014.
The exhibition was titled ‘Inner Light’, and was held at the National Museum, Onikan, Lagos as well as curated by SMO Contemporary, under Sandra Mbanego.
Beyond visual art, the legendary Osadebe showed prowess in other creative genres including being a playwright, theatre director and a teacher.
Born in 1934, the late master artist grew up in Onitsha, Anambra State, distingushing himself as a brilliant draughtsman from an early age.
He graduated from Zaria in 1962, specialising in Painting and Sculpture. He taught Visual Art at University of Nigeria, Nsukka from 1962 to 1965, and later left the country on Aggrey Fellowship for African Students to the United States where he bagged a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1967 and a second master’s degree in 1973 from the Goodman School of Drama, Chicago, and a PhD at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois in 1981.
However, since retiring in 2007, he dedicated his life to his passion in his studio in Jackson, Mississippi.
