Reminiscences with Prof Bruce Onobrakpeya

Professor Bruce Onobrakpeya is a world-renowned master print-maker, painter, sculptor, poet and pioneer in modern African art, whose long and distinguished career spans six decades and continues to astonish with protean audacity. He employs a deep understanding of the cultural history of the African continent combined with a willingness to embrace a continuum of cultural precedents and influences along with an open-ended improvisational sensibility to create work that exploit the fissure between the natural world and the world of imagination.

The visual resonance in his work is undeniable, attesting to his ability to seamlessly fuse ancient and modern concepts and aesthetics that pay tribute to the traditional religion, custom and folklore of his heritage while using a wide range of printmaking techniques including those he pioneered. Bruce Onobrakpeya was born August 30, 1932 in Agbarha-Otor near Ughelli, Delta State, Nigeria, and is of Urhobo descent. He received a diploma in fine arts in 1961 and arts education in 1962 from the Nigerian College of Technology (now Ahmadu Bello University) in Zaria. Throughout the 1960s he participated in numerous artist workshops, including the Mbari Artists’ and Writers’ Club printmaking workshops at Ibadan directed by the Dutch printmaker Ru Van Rossen.

During this time he apprenticed with sculptor Ben Enwonwu, and became a founding member (1964) of the Society of Nigerian Artists. In 1990 he participated in the 44th Venice Biennale where he received an honorable mention with artist El Anatsui. He has traveled extensively, teaching workshops and exhibiting in the United States, Italy, Zimbabwe, Britain, Kenya, and Germany. Awards include honorary D. Litt. from the University of Ibadan in 1989. The Pope John Paul II award for painting the life of Saint Paul, the Fellowship of Asele Institute award, the Saddam Hussein award, the Solidra Circle award, the Living Human Treasure Award (2006) given by UNESCO, and on 14 September 2010 became the second winner of Nigeria’s prestigious Nigerian Creativity Award by the Federal Government of Nigeria.

Its first winner was Chinua Achebe. IN 2017, he was conferred by the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, Nigerian National Order of Merit Award (NNOM) This is the highest academic award in Nigeria and is an academic award conferred on distinguished academicians and intellectuals who have made outstanding contributions to the academic, growth and development of Nigeria. In this interview, the legendary artist talks about his life and art.

Can you recall your childhood years in your native environment?

Well, the first was the traditional, rural setting in Urhoboland. Then my early education was in Urhoboland and Benin, Sapele; that was early elementary education. Then for my secondary school, I went to Benin. That was my early days.

Definitely, we were forest people and I used to describe myself basically as one of the forest people because we grew up in natural, rural environment, roaming the bushes, setting traps for animals and birds, and then catching fishes in the small village stream, and all that.

In those early days, entertainment in form of rural songs and music was readily available. That was my early, boyhood days and all that. The school then was the colonial system – the Infant Standard One to Six and all that; writing was taught; reading was taught; arithmetic, history, geography and all that were taught in those early days.

Did you make any big catch you can still recall while setting traps for birds and animals in your boyhood days?

We made a big catch. The excitement was that during the season when a particular tree fruits ripened and the birds used to assemble there. And then I was small but the bigger boys, we followed them and set traps on top of the trees and by the time we came back the next day, the birds were trapped there. Sometimes, the traps were set on the ground and the birds would fly down to eat some of the fruits that dropped down from the tree and they would be trapped, also.

And then the one I enjoyed most was fishing in the water; using the hook or using the scoop to fish. The stream flowed from one part to the other; there was the middle section but there was no fear of getting drowned because it was not all that deep. You can then use the scoop and catch a group of fish there. Then swimming in the shallow water and little things like that; chasing rats up stream and about the bush. Those were the little things we did as little boys.

Were you a good swimmer then?

Not necessarily but actually the river was not deep enough to warrant many to be suspended on top of the water because wherever you are, your legs would touch the ground. So there was no way to use the arm or the legs to be suspended or move fast in the water. So, I wasn’t a good swimmer then but when I stayed in Sapele, I used the opportunity to perfect swimming, although sometimes we had to go for firewood with canoes and all that. But that was a risk because I couldn’t swim as such if anything happened that would have been the end but the Benin end, the suburb of Benin, part of it had been taken up by development.

Do you still remember your secondary school era?

Some of the elementary school period had been in Ughelli. I went back to Benin and then later, I finished my elementary school in Sapele and for my secondary school, I had to come back to Benin, now they call it Erewele College. It was on the Benin side of Erewele but now they relocated to Orugbene which is on the other side of the Eva Valley. So that was the school I attended.

Do you still remember some of your childhood friends?

Yes. I do but what is very strange is that it was a rural environment particularly for the Urhobos, only very few survived secondary education and even went to university. And so because of that growing up to become adults and so on, all those people were wiped out of my memory.

The name Bruce Onobrakpeya is usually associated with arts not only in Nigeria but also beyond. At what point in your life did you take to arts?

Well, I will say strictly that I got into arts in secondary school; that was when I realized that art was perhaps the profession I should take. It started this way: At that time, art was not rated as anything that was high. In the secondary school, because of my natural interest, I had a club where we practiced art, book binding, drawing and all those things. Then in the class where we had a teacher who remarked myself, two sons of Oba Akenzua, we came first, second and third in the art subject. So all along in the school, the principal and the proprietor had noticed that I was very much interested in art.

In those days we used to have six years of secondary school, but one of the years, it was reduced to five years. That was when General Certificate of Education (GCE) was introduced. After the GCE, I left and then the principal and the proprietor called me back – I was expecting my GCE result – but they called me back to be in the school and just to be around with the boys, that’s to teach them art. That was the way I realized that they had spotted something in me. So their bringing me back to the school was a way to nurture me further and make me go into the art world. That was when I really realized that art was something I should pursue. The school career guidance was excellent at the time.

Were there some challenges you had while developing your art skill and how did you tackle them?

The challenge I faced was matriculating into the university. When the GCE system was introduced, there was slight variation from the University Cambridge at the time which when you passed very well, you can be sent for London matriculation as well. There were some changes and those changes brought some difficulties to some of us to matriculate at that university. But even at that time, the study of art was not very well defined. It was many years after I had passed out that the Nigerian College of Arts and Technology was set up and so I had left Benin and went to Edoghasa School. The Principal enrolled me to that Edoghasa College just about that time I had actually matriculated and gotten all the requirements I needed.

So matriculating to another university was difficult but I think at that time, there was no art university. The delay was actually to catch up with the introduction of the art in the university system and so on to the College of Technology and that benefited me.  It was a challenge now that led to something good.

Can you count the number of art works you produced over the decades?

It’s very difficult. I used to take inventory but it’s now very difficult. In fact, it’s very, very difficult thing to do now. The reason is that I am experimental. One thing, I can examine it with a different text and even at that I do not regard an art work as a finished art. So something I did five years ago which perhaps I didn’t like very well, could be revisited and I will change what was there as well. So all these make it very, very complicated. If we have had some people following us, my career as an artist would create problem for visualisers and curators. So it’s quite difficult to put a tab on the number of art works but over the time I can see that I have gone through pinions and out of these pinions some works stand out as remarkable, masterpieces arts, something that can stand for that particular energy that I put into it, the discovery of one or two new major ideas.

Can you recall any of your works that could be regarded as remarkable masterpiece?

I know that in the 1960s, one of the pictures that actually made me very international is the Conference. It was a picture that came out of my childhood memory which I created. It was an animal which I had seen as a child on a wall. When I saw it – my mother who went up hill to fetch firewood didn’t quite understand why I screamed. As a child I never really got out of it. So I cried and held at my mother’s feet; and when we left the memory was there. And something happened in the studio which resulted in printing it and so on. It became actually my first masterpiece. Leopard came suddenly off memory but it was something that reminded me of that scene I had witnessed as a child.

So did the work achieve national and international recognition?

Yes, it did because after printing it on oil colours, I later made some prints out of it and the prints got published, disseminated and went round out there. That was the first real masterpiece which I did.

Thematically, what issues are usually reflected in your art works?

Well, I studied printing because I was moved by peer instincts because my friends Grillo, and others studied printing, and so I wanted to do it. But really, I am experimental and the graphics teacher wanted me to do print-making. So it was not until I left the college and attended workshops in which the father of Shegun Anife gave a talk, I discovered then that my area was print-making. So they described me as a master print-maker but actually that term stuck. After that, within the print-making I developed other techniques which are basically Nigerian technology; they are all in the art books and so on which are not elsewhere. And then from the print-making, I had gone into low-relief and three-dimensional and then even back into printing.

So it’s a question of development; the printing technique is one aligning to the other and so on and so forth. That is it. And I have many types that I have developed that are now in the books. If anybody is writing any type now on Nigeria, it is there and a few of those techniques I developed have entered international books. Things like the Plastographs, Plastocast, Ivorycast, Deep-delining and Yellowgraphs and all that. They are all originated from my practices.

At a point, you were accused of being into fetish things and idolatry. Why do you think people felt that way about you and your works?

It was because of the fact that I used our local images and natural things. I understand that people think that what I do seem to be fetish; that the images are not Christian and so they shouldn’t touch them. But that idea or line of thought is dying. A lot of people now see that nobody worships these things I created; they are just art works. They were created out of their distinct cultural values as well. And so people now understand the works in that perspective and appreciate them and collect them. That dark side of understanding is now no more.

What are these your images or paintings people associate with fetishes and idolatry?

Not as if they were referring to a particular image but the concept of the work of art. The concept might be either the feeling about the gods or feeling about the other world; something relating to ancestral worship, they are all pregnant with meanings and interpretations or philosophies. So because a local god is mentioned or a local philosophy is mentioned as well, they think that they lead to worship or adulation of those things, no. It is just to put down the culture which is built around them when we want to bring out a good lesson or something.

Do you have regrets in life? May be a piece of work you did and later regretted it?

No. I don’t have because I don’t decide to live a life full of controversies. But on the other hand, I do have regret. I painted the apostles in black colours. I didn’t use white figures. I used black images rather than oyibo (whites). So the Christian community, especially the Catholics didn’t like it and they wanted me to change it. The painting raised so much dust at the time. But because the Bishop was ahead of his audience, had spent about 40, 45, 50 years in the church he sort of overruled the matter. So, that painted images sort of created a dark hole in the history of my paintings, so to say, because of the materials used. You know, art work has to be dynamic or flexible often. But what came out of that is that a number of other works has come out of that exhibition, some of them I created. In fact, the work actually in thick modem is one of those things that came out of that one, ‘The Last Supper.’ Even though there are some other works now showing the Nigerian motive of entering into Christianity; the idea of Christness which must not be limited to the Jewish people only.

Why exactly did people feel offended by your painting of ‘The Last Supper’?

The ordinary people felt that the figures should be Oyibo (white colour); I must say that these people were not in Christianity by the time of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Well, my own strong argument is that Christness goes beyond mere dressing or skin colour; it is a universal message at every stage; the lesson that it taught …that we should have our local traditional Christ way in  behaviour, not necessarily in mere dressing.

Could you recall how you met your wife?

Well, I met her when I was teaching and she was living in the college, a secondary school, and we met but she had schooled in Kano and she did her secondary school in Ijebu-Ode and Lagos area, and when we met, I had to travel to Kano and meet with the parents. Eventually, the opportunity came and we got married at home in Sapele. But she later worked in the Art Council and she had no inkling about art but because we’re together, she began to love art and her working in the Art Council actually made it possible for her to now appreciate art and then be in tune with me.

What actually attracted you to her? What are the qualities?

Well, first and foremost, she was like me Urhobo, beautiful and she carried all the attributes of moving culture forward. So that was a certain pedigree I observed in her. When it comes to reflecting on your background and using your culture, they are very much like it but that wasn’t there. She is a straightforward person. And when we get to Urhobo, we talk and the culture was clearly understood, what should be done. And we married and so on and so forth. Those were the pluses for me.

Is any of your children taking to art like you?

All of them are doing art but one of them, particularly, is teaching art at the University of Benin. He went to England and got his master’s and he is a teacher at the Yaba College of Technology. One of my sons, Ejiro, became a curator of arts; he owns a gallery and I think he still owns the gallery but it is more of the internet kind of thing. But he wants to come back to owning a physical gallery. So they are all into art.

The first born is an arts enthusiast. He knows more about arts and the development of the arts, my own development, looking into what I do. Then I have a daughter in Atlanta, USA. Before she left for America, she had taken my works for exhibition in Abuja. Now she is in Atlanta, she collects my works and they call her and she speaks about my art. She is very interested in arts. And I have another daughter who works in advertising company or agency and she also talks art.

So when you say ‘they,’ are all doing arts, how many are your children?

They are five children; three boys and two girls.

So yours can be called a family of artists?

Yes; a family of artists.

Are they thinking of documenting your life history, like a biography?

They are not doing that right now because they don’t have the need to do it. Right now, I have a team working with me. I have an average of about 16 people who are assisting me in Lagos. I have an art set-up at Agbarha-Otor, near Ughelli, Delta State which is similar to this one that we’re watching now, where people go to at least two times in a year, spending two sessions where I train, is a forum for bringing artists together, young and old, professors, teachers and even people in the area who have either dropped out of school or have no opportunity at all of going to study art. I bring them together. So, that again, is another place where documentation of my artworks is done.

Yesterday, a former Chief Judge of Anambra brought to me my artwork he bought since 1973 for me to autograph for him.  So we originate a lot of books, a lot of autobiographies. Right now, the children don’t even have to… they don’t think about that because they believe they have materials on my works and they use them. And they make reference to them.

Many associate the name Bruce Onobrakpeya with Prof Ben Enwenwu, another master artist. Are both of you contemporaries?

When I left Zaria, I served apprenticeship under him in Lagos. I was with him. So he was ahead of us all. When I was at Zaria, he actually came to lecture us, talk to the art department, people in the university and so on. So he was ahead of us and by the time we came out, Ben had already made big name. He had printed and sculpted the Queen of England and he had attended international conferences and had made artworks for the museums and other places. So Ben had already been fully established. Ben is not our contemporary. Ben was far ahead of us.

Now is there anything you observed lacking in the modern, contemporary art?

Yes. What is lacking is a notion that art is a very expensive commodity and that it is very rare for an artwork to be easily affordable. But I think that art should be made to reach everybody and that the monetary aspect of art should be the last consideration. If the art is very good, with time it will acquire value and importance. So chasing money and making money from art first is a wrong idea. People should take their time to create because creativity is something that should be given more time so that you create something that will succeed, something that everybody sees and marvels at. You have to take your time to deliver that concept and bring it out clearly. It’s like writing. You have to make your idea quite clear.

What advice do you have for up-coming artists?

Plenty advice but what I want the up-coming artists to do is one of the things I’ve just told you about. When they are growing up and have left the art school or still in the art school, they should be attached to masters, to learn, not necessarily the techniques of the master but learn the way of life because as an artist, you must have challenges but when you are working with masters, it is possible you must understand those challenges when they come and once you understand the challenges, they are part of life and art. So that’s the first advice.

Then the second advice is that, like it has been done now in Life In My City Art Festival (LIMCAF), they could form a group that constitutes the ones that won the arts exhibition in 2019. They should tag themselves together, call themselves one name, work together and exhibit together, doing collaboration. So when one person in the group is mentioned, they touch all of them – Like in our own group then which was called the Zaria Art Society but they gave us the name Zaria Rebels. When they mentioned the name of one person in our group, all the other names showed up. So they should team up and work together. Also, although they may be working hard to get awards and all that but their interest now should not be the money that comes to them, they should make their works first to be in places where people who matter will see and appreciate them because it is handwork of an artist that actually sends more works to an artist. When an artist work is hanging in a public place, people will see it and ask: Who did this? And the credit will go back to the artist. And also, they should try to keep growing; it’s a fallacy to say that oh, you have reached this stage and you can stand on your own. The art frame goes with a Chinese proverb which says that the art is like going upstream anytime you stop the movement, you’re moving downstream rather than moving up. You’re working all the time and so there is no time for the artist to retire. An artist never retires because you’re working all the time because newer things are coming all the time because art is like discovery. You discover new things, you articulate them and then you make them visible. That is art. When the artist has done all these, then money, fame and all that will follow.

Do you still remember the number of solo exhibitions you have organized over the years?

This year I am actually going into a kind of retrospective mode. Just try to commemorate the first exhibition I had in 1959. So from that time to this time, it has been many exhibitions. In fact, I’ve lost count. There have been many, many exhibitions. There are books at Enugu, reference materials that can really give inkling to some of the artworks and exhibitions that we have done and so on. But one of the highlights of these exhibitions is that one exhibition I had in…One of the exhibitions later the work is called “The Last Supper.” The exhibition house like the Museum of African Arts in Washington DC has collected my works. My work is there in The Vatican in Rome, some in Japan, and some other collections. That is me.

How do you relax?

I read magazines. I attend exhibitions and travel. Here now in Enugu, I’m relaxing but most of the time, some of the time I am in the centre, Harmattan at Agbarha-Otor which is a very expansive galleries and so on. I travel out of the country and sometime I watch CNN, listen to our local news here. So these are some of the ways I think I relax. But early in the morning when I wake up, I try to jug a little bit.

At 87, you still look healthy and strong. Is there any secret to your fitness?

I don’t know whether there’s any secret. But I think that the basic for a man is to have something doing, something you are thinking about. And once you achieve that, the thought of other negative things will be off your mind and that makes you feel more relieved and healthy.

What is your basic philosophy of life?

My basic philosophy is that God has created every man for a purpose and you try to discover that purpose and work along it. That’s it. Once you do that you will be happy.

What kind of food, music appeal to you?

I eat eba; I eat starch. I eat oyorn, rice and I eat nothing special. When this traditional music whether from here or from abroad is on, I dance to the tune. Musicians come and go just like artists, so there is no particular musician I will consider my favourite.