Nigerian Modernism
Against a cultural landscape long dominated by Western frameworks, Nigerian Modernism – Art and Independencereframes the history of modern art from a decisively Nigerian perspective. Published in conjunction with a major exhibition, this substantial hardback charts the emergence of modern art in Nigeria from the aftermath of the Second World War through the late twentieth century—a period marked by decolonisation, political change, and artistic self-definition.
Edited by Osei Bonsu, Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, the volume rejects the idea of Nigerian modernism as a secondary response to Europe. Instead, it presents the movement as intellectually autonomous and internationally significant. Essays by Bilal Akkouche, délé jégédé, Will Rea, Molara Wood, and others explore how artists negotiated tradition and experimentation, spirituality and material practice, grounding analysis in the artists’ own theoretical and cultural positions.
Set within the charged atmosphere of post-war optimism and independence-era transformation, the book traces the work of figures such as Ben Enwonwu, Ladi Kwali, Clara Ugbodaga-Ngu, Uche Okeke, and Bruce Onobrakpeya. Their practices draw simultaneously on indigenous aesthetics, Christian and Islamic visual cultures, and global modernist ideas, producing a hybrid language that resists fixed categorisation.
Featuring over 300 reproduced works—many unfamiliar to Western audiences—the publication is as visually compelling as it is scholarly. The imagery captures both painterly intensity and sculptural rhythm, while the cover image, Okeke’s Primaeval Beast (1961), encapsulates the book’s central thesis: modernity in Nigeria was not imported, but generated from lived experience.
More than a survey, Nigerian Modernism positions independence-era artists as critical thinkers who reshaped modern art on their own terms. Through Bonsu’s editorial vision, the book redraws the map of Modernism, restoring Nigerian artists to the centre of its history—not as peripheral figures, but as active agents and interlocutors.
Nigerian Modernism – Art and Independence, hardback, edited by Osei Bonsu.
