Art world links which caught my eye…

Bruce Onobrakpeya “Station V: The Cyrenean carries the cross” linoleum block print on rice paper (1969)

Pray for the persecuted Christians of Nigeria. This 2024 article discusses how one artist has incorporated traditional Nigerian motifs into biblical stories.

“From medieval frescoes to contemporary masterpieces, artists have long found inspiration interpreting Christian imagery. In his Renaissance mural, Leonardo da Vinci famously captured the Last Supper on the refectory wall of Milan’s Santa Maria delle Grazie convent. More than 400 years later, surrealist Salvador Dalí depicted the Crucifixion on a hypercube cross, a blend of science and spirituality, his wife the model for Mary Magdalene. In the hands of artists like El Greco, Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon, scenes from the Gospels and portraits of Jesus rendered in myriad styles have defined Western art and religious narrative.

“But one Nigerian artist, Bruce Onobrakpeya, a trailblazer of African Modernism, pushed well beyond the familiar portrayal of Christ’s story, creating a radical body of work about the Bible that now receives its due in Washington, D.C. A celebrated painter, sculptor and printmaker, Onobrakpeya reimagined the life of Jesus through Indigenous folklore to resonate with African Christians in early post-colonial Nigeria, while upending centuries of iconography.

“This summer, the soon-to-be 92-year-old artist’s first major solo exhibition in the United States, ‘The Mask and the Cross,’ is on view at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art through January of next year. The show brings together Onobrakpeya’s work made after Nigeria became independent in 1960, including a 1969 series of linocut prints titled ‘Fourteen Stations of the Cross,’ commissioned by the Catholic Church. The pioneering show comes to the Smithsonian following its premiere at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta last year.”

Read the full article here: SMITHSONIAN – After Nigerian Independence, One Renowned Artist Made Jesus a West African Savior in His Vibrant Work

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