09.08.1946–16.02.1995
Gani Odutokun
Gani Odutokun was born in Nsawam, Ghana, to Nigerian Yoruba parents, and became one of the best-known artists of the university community in Zaria, in northern Nigeria. He painted on themes of accident and design, made murals and book covers, and taught in the fine arts department. He died in 1995 on the way back from an exhibition.
Biography
He began not in a studio but in an office: after secondary school Gani Odutokun worked as a clerk at Nigerian Breweries.
He was born on 9 August 1946 in Nsawam, Ghana, to Nigerian Yoruba parents originally from Offa (now in Kwara State). They were in the cocoa trade. His early childhood was spent in the Ashanti region; when the cocoa trade slumped, his father moved back to Nigeria. Friends saw his talent and urged him to study. In 1972 he entered Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria, in the fine arts department. He took his bachelor’s degree in 1975 and his master’s in 1979. Immediately after the bachelor’s degree he was taken on in the same department as a graduate assistant, so the university became both his school and his workplace. It seems to me that this setting shaped his standing: he is known for his own work, and also for supporting younger artists in the circle of the Zaria Art Society, a group associated with the Zaria school.
He painted pictures, made wall murals and designed book covers. The themes of his painting are philosophical: accident and design, the nature of life. His solo exhibitions are said to include “Fragments” and “The Seemingly Unbalanced Equilibrium”. Some of his works challenge Western expectations of “African art”. At times they carried political commentary: the 1988 painting “The King Shares a Joke with his General” refers to the politics of Ibrahim Babangida, then Nigeria’s head of state.
Odutokun died in February 1995 while returning from an exhibition that followed a workshop at the Goethe Institute in Lagos. He was one of four artists killed in a road accident. The sources differ on the exact date: 15 or 16 February.
In the same month an exhibition in his honour, “Time No Boundaries”, with works by many artists from northern Nigeria, opened at the Maison de France in Lagos. In 2008 the Nigerian Gallery of Art showed a memorial exhibition of his paintings at the Aina Onabolu complex of the National Arts Theatre in Iganmu, Lagos. After his death he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Society of Nigerian Artists.
Profile notes