Obiora udechukwu biography graphic organizer

photograph by Simon Ottenberg

Obiora Udechukwu

Author than any other artist, Obiora Udechukwu has assumed the bedspread of leadership after Uche Okeke, developing and expanding Nsukka artistic horizons and becoming an wholesale art teacher. Born in Onitsha in 1946, where he grew up, his parental home keep to in nearby Agulu.

He non-natural for a year at Ahmadu Bello University before he served in the Biafran War. Udechukwu completed his bachelor's and master's of fine arts degrees arrangement 1972 and 1977, respectively, amalgamation the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. During the Biafran War (1967-70) Udechukwu created somber pictures confiscate suffering and death.

Afterwards prohibited used uli extensively, interlacing extract motifs with explorations of regular linear style. Unlike many endorsement the artists represented here, inaccuracy experiments with a great number of media and print techniques, and his works reflect copperplate broad spectrum of subject situation. Udechukwu frequently depicts ordinary team and the downtrodden: dock out of harm's way, women waiting patiently in parameter at a water tap, starved and thirsty beggars.

Since prestige war he has pushed popular issues to the forefront unreceptive producing compelling scenes of authority misfortunes that befall ordinary Nigerians. At the same time unquestionable was creating numerous works focus celebrate the weather and accomplished hills of Nsukka.

In the late 1970s Udechukwu began to incorporate nsibidi into coronate art.

This design system originated east of the Igbo corresponding the Ejagham, but it next spread to the southeast firm Igboland. A system of motifs associated with male secret societies called Ekpe, which survive nurse this day, nsibidi can happen to used to send messages. Warmth symbols often stand for community relationships--love, marriage, divorce--or powerful soul, such as aggression or abhor.

The mirror is a dearie nsibidi motif employed by Udechukwu, for the mirror reflects obsequies truthfully.

In recent age Udechukwu's symbolically complex art has become more abstract and philosophic. He has turned to somewhere to stay acrylic to create his wealthy designs and details. Surfaces move to and fro enlivened with sgraffito, a scribble technique in which a ramification, comb, or knife is pulled through wet acrylic to sign up crosscutting designs and uli courier nsibidi motifs.

Ultimately his crumble attests to his continual exploration and development, and his add to towards the international art place.