kó presents ‘Osogbo,’ an exhibition that traces the emergence of the Osogbo Art School, a movement that emerged in the early 1960s in which rose a generation of artists that charted a distinctive path for modern art in Nigeria. Bringing together key works that span the 1960s-2000s, this exhibition situates Osogbo at the dawn of independence, when a new cultural confidence fused indigenous traditions with contemporary forms. This exhibition features Jacob Afolabi, Olatunde Asiru, Georgina Beier, Jimoh Buraimoh, Adebisi Fabunmi, Rufus Ogundele, Nike Davies-Okundaye, Muraina Oyelami, Twins Seven-Seven, and Susanne Wenger.
The Osogbo Art School, as it came to be known, developed informally from the restless creative energy of the post-independence era. The Osogbo Art School emerged from a series of experimental art workshops held between 1962–1966 at the Mbari Mbayo Club in Osogbo, in collaboration with several international artists and intellectuals living in Osogbo at the time, including German professor Ulli Beier, British artist Georgina Betts (Beier), Nigerian playwright Duro Ladipo, and Austrian artist Susanne Wenger. The workshops provided local participants with materials, studio space, and mentorship that encouraged individual expression over academic instruction.
Largely outside formal art-school training, the artists forged highly original approaches to painting, printmaking, textile, and mixed media, drawing on Yoruba mythology, performance, and modern life. From this setting arose a generation of artists who developed distinct personal styles while retaining a cohesive visual language rooted in Yoruba culture.
(L) Duro Ladipo, photographed by Ulli Beier. (R) Susanne Wenger and Ulli Beier with guest in Osgobo, c. 1960s. Images courtesy of the Center for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU), Osogbo.
The story of the Osogbo Art School begins with the intellectual and creative activity of German professor, writer, and scholar Ulli Beier (1922–2011), and his first wife, Austrian artist Susanne Wenger (1915-2009), who moved to Nigeria in 1950 for Beier to accept a post at the University of Ibadan. Beier and Wenger quickly grew weary of the rigidity of the academic environment, which often kept Western professors at a distance from the rest of the student body. They moved away from the university to settle in nearby towns, including Ede and Ibolu, before finally settling in Osogbo in 1958.
Beier became an early catalyst for young writers, artists, and intellectuals coming of age at Nigeria’s independence. After attending the First Congress of Black African Writers in Paris in 1956, he founded Black Orpheus, the first African literary journal in English. In 1961, he established the Mbari Club at the University of Ibadan, which became a creative hub for Nigerian writers and artists. In Osogbo, Beier sought to extend the spirit of Mbari into a more informal, community-based setting outside of the university system.
Born in Graz, Austria, Susanne Wenger studied art in Vienna, becoming an early founder of the Vienna Art Club. Her life changed profoundly after moving to Nigeria with Beier. After settling in Osogbo, Wenger remained there for the rest of her life, becoming a Yoruba priestess and the guardian of the Osun-Osogbo Sacred Grove. Wenger spent decades developing an artistic cooperative that created monumental sculptures and shrines within the Sacred Grove, the ancient site of worship dedicated to Osun, the Yoruba Goddess of the River. Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005, this collaborative practice became known as the New Sacred Art Movement.
In Osogbo, the cultural extension of the Mbari Club an Ibadan expanded to encompass both Yoruba theatre and the visual arts. Mbari Mbayo, coined from a Yoruba phrase meaning “when we see it, we shall be happy”, revolved around Duro Ladipo’s Popular Bar, with many of its activities taking place within the compound of Ladipo’s father. Duro Ladipo (1926–1978) was a playwright, actor, and theatre director whose works drew on Yoruba history and mythology to create modern stage dramas. Ladipo co-founded Mbari Mbayo with Ulli Beier in 1961, staging performances with his theatre troupe while the Beiers encouraged visual artists. Many of the artists who later defined the Osogbo Art School were active members of Ladipo’s troupe. Ladipo’s theatre gained international recognition, and his troupe performed at the First Commonwealth Arts Festival in London in 1965, followed by extensive tours throughout Europe.
(L) Georgina Beier and Adebisi Fabunmi creating a mural at the palace in Osogbo, 1965. (C) Advertisement for Third Experimental Art School, August 3-8, 1964. (R) Rufus Ogundele creating a linocut, 1965. Images courtesy of the Center for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU), Osogbo.
Two art workshops were held at Mbari Mbayo in 1962 and 1963 with visiting artists, including Guyanese painter Denis Williams and American painter Jacob Lawrence. However, it was not until the 1964 workshop that catalysed the developing creative energy in Osogbo into an art movement.
Georgina Betts (Beier) (1938–2021) emerged as a key figure who would facilitate the 1964 workshop and mentor the artists. Born in a working-class suburb of London, Georgina attended Kingston Art School but left early, frustrated by its discouragement of originality. In 1958, while browsing in a small London library, she discovered the novels of Amos Tutuola, whose books, blending Yoruba folklore, oral storytelling, and fantastical journeys, captivated her imagination with their surreal depictions of African life. Inspired by Tutuola’s writing, she decided to travel to Nigeria the following year, at age twenty-one. After a brief period in Zaria, Georgina journeyed to Osogbo in 1963 in search of Ulli Beier, whom she had been told could advise her on Nigerian literature. She quickly developed a relationship with Beier, whom she later married. The responsibility for nurturing the budding artists in Osogbo gradually shifted to Georgina.
In August 1964, the Department of Extra-Mural Studies at the University of Ibadan, in collaboration with Mbari Mbayo Osogbo, organized the Third Experimental Art School. It required no prior qualifications or experience and charged only a nominal registration fee of five shillings. Open to anyone curious about art, the workshop attracted over fifty participants, many of who would become the pioneering figures of the Osogbo Art School.
(L) Muraina Oyelami, 1965. (R) Jimoh Buraimoh with Banks Anthony at ISIS, Lagos, 1969. Images courtesy of the Center for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU), Osogbo, and JImoh Buraimoh.
After the five-day workshop, Georgina selected a smaller group of participants to continue as full-time studio artists. Supported with modest stipends, materials, and daily guidance, they developed their own techniques and styles over the next two years, from 1964 until December 1966, when the Beiers left Nigeria. During this period, the artists worked in studios at the Osogbo Museum and at the Beier-Wenger residence, in an environment that encouraged experimentation, discipline, and collaboration. After an intensive two-year period of artistic incubation, their collective efforts culminated in their first major public presentation: the Osogbo Exhibition at the Goethe-Institut in Lagos, which opened on December 14, 1966. From this point onward, the Osogbo artists exhibited regularly across Nigeria, establishing the Osogbo Art School as a vital new voice in Nigerian modernism.
Soon, the artists’ works began to circulate internationally. Early exhibitions abroad included presentations at the Neue Münchener Galerie, Munich (1965); the National Museum of Ethnography (Náprstek Museum), Prague (1965); the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (1967); University of Sussex (1967); Camden Arts Centre, London (1969); and the Commonwealth Institute, London (1970). In the United States, the exhibition Contemporary African Art (Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, 1969) toured extensively between 1969 and 1973. Throughout the 1970s, the Osogbo artists were consistently presented by leading museums worldwide, establishing them among the most widely exhibited Nigerian artists of their generation.
(L) Nike Davies-Okundaye and Twins Seven-Seven, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Maine, 1974. (R) Nike Davies-Okundaye, 1971, photographed by Ulli Beier. Images courtesy of the Center for Black Culture and International Understanding (CBCIU), Osogbo.
Although Nike Davies-Okundaye was not a formal participant in the Mbari Mbayo Art Workshops, she has become one of the most celebrated figures associated with the Osogbo Art School and a pioneering force in preserving and elevating Nigeria’s textile traditions. At a time when the Osogbo movement was largely a “man’s club,” Nike emerged as its central female voice, deeply intertwined with Osogbo’s creative community. Married to Twins Seven-Seven for over fifteen years, Nike also maintained lifelong friendships with Susanne Wenger, Ulli Beier, and Georgina Beier. She opened her first gallery in Osogbo from her own bedroom in the mid 1960s, eventually expanding her vision to establish galleries in Lagos, Abuja, and Ogidi.
Today, the Osogbo Art School is remembered as forging a distinct thread of Nigerian modernism that celebrated Yoruba cultural identity while engaging with the rapid social transformations of a new era. Their creative energy carried Yoruba traditions into a modern global context.
