1954–present
Tayo Adenaike
Tayo Adenaike (born 1954) studied painting at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, under Obiora Udechukwu and regards himself as a “third generation” painter of the Nsukka school. He prefers watercolour and works uli, akika and nsibidi signs into it. For many years he has been artistic director of an advertising firm in Enugu, painting at night and on weekends; he has held eighteen solo exhibitions.
Biography
Tayo Adenaike paints at night and on weekends. By day he has a full-time post as artistic director of Dawn Functions, Ltd., a major Nigerian firm in Enugu.
He was born in 1954 in Warri. His family is Yoruba, with ancestral roots in Idanre, in Ogun State in southwestern Nigeria. In 1967, at Federal Government College in Warri (in what is now Delta State), he received his first formal instruction in art. Later he won second prize at the All Nigeria Secondary School National Art Workshop, held at Ahmadu Bello University in Zaria. That prize, along with some other circumstances, strengthened his decision to keep studying. He entered the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, where Obiora Udechukwu became his teacher. In 1979 Adenaike received his bachelor’s degree in fine arts there, and in 1982 his master’s degree. After university he has worked mostly in advertising. The post of artistic director leaves little time, so painting falls to the night hours and weekends. Every year he travels to the United States; what exactly these trips involve, I have not been able to establish.
He occasionally works in oils and acrylics, but his preferred medium is watercolour. Into it he introduces many uli signs (traditional designs of the Igbo people) and akika designs, and more recently he has begun adding nsibidi motifs. His compositions are complex and often based on personal themes; much of his work is topical and deeply personal. Human faces, distorted or in agony, often appear on the sheets. Another group of works draws its subjects from the artist’s Yoruba childhood. He explores Igbo and Nsukka styles with an insight unusual in an artist from another culture.
He calls himself a third generation painter. For him the first generation is Uche Okeke and Chike Aniakor, the second his teacher Udechukwu. The Nsukka group is the name given to Nigerian artists associated with the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in the 1970s; they worked to revive uli and brought its designs into contemporary art, using acrylic, tempera, gouache, pen and ink, pastel, oil and watercolour.
Adenaike has held eighteen solo exhibitions and has taken part in many group exhibitions in Nigeria, the United States, England and Germany.
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