Dance of the Green Shadows

About the artist

A defining figure of Nigerian modernism, Bruce Onobrakpeya has spent more than six decades developing a visual language rooted in Urhobo culture, folklore and contemporary Nigerian life. A founding member of the Zaria Art Society, he helped shape the post-independence movement that brought Indigenous Nigerian traditions into conversation with modernist practice. He became particularly known for expanding the possibilities of printmaking through techniques of his own invention. His work is held by major international institutions, and in 2024 the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art presented The Mask and the Cross, following its premiere at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta—his first major solo museum exhibition in the United States. Across his practice, inherited symbols and cultural memory are continually reworked rather than simply preserved