Twins Seven-Seven, 1944-2011, born Nigeria Search this
Medium:
Oil, pastel, and ink on wood
Dimensions:
H x W x D (framed): 67.6 × 128.6 × 3.2 cm (26 5/8 × 50 5/8 × 1 1/4 in.)
Type:
Painting
Geography:
Nigeria
Date:
ca. 1960
Label Text:
The first half of the twentieth century gave rise to widespread experimentation with new media by Africa’s artists. Many of Nigeria’s artists, for example, explored new techniques, including oil painting and printmaking. As elsewhere on the continent, some of these artists received training at local and international art schools, while others were taught in community workshops offered by expatriate artists.
Modern African artwork addressed a range of subject matter, from political concerns of the day to depictions of a rapidly transforming landscape due to social and environmental changes.
A major artistic transformation occurred in Oshogbo, a Yoruba town in western Nigeria, in the early 1960s. Expatriates Susanne Wenger, Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier introduced new techniques and materials to Yoruba artists and urged them to find their own forms of expression. Wenger, from Austria, worked with the New Sacred Art Movement to preserve a grove of trees sacred to the river goddess Oshun. Ulli Beier, a teacher from Germany, organized art workshops conducted by Guyanese art historian and artist Denis Williams, African American artist Jacob Lawrence and English artist Georgina Beier. The workshops focused on printmaking but were intended to help participants learn to support themselves as artists. Many of them have gone on to create important family legacies of artists. Twins Seven-Seven, for example, has influenced generations of artists on three continents. Others applied their work to various media.
Born Taiwo Olaniyi Oyewale Aitoyeje, the artist chose the name Twins Seven-Seven as a reference to the good fortune and spiritual power of being a twin in a series of twins. A multitalented musician and artist associated with Oshogbo, he paints, draws, sculpts, designs textiles and works in metal. Here, the Yoruba god Oshun appears in his folktale-titled piece The Fisherman and the River Goddess with His Captured Multi-Colored Fishes and the River Night Guard, a mixed-media work on board (oil, pastel and ink). Like some of his other boards which feature fantastic creatures emerging from densely patterned and textured scenes, his imagery is tied to Yoruba oral traditions, myths, religion and his own personal experiences.
Description:
Horizontal oil, pastel and ink on wood panel with two figures in a boat, trees in the background and fish in the bottom of the boat.
Provenance:
Merton Simpson, New York, -- to 1997
Exhibition History:
Currents: Water in African Art, National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., June 2016-ongoing (deinstalled September 7, 2022)
Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and the African Atlantic World, Fowler Museum, University of California, Los Angeles, April 6-August 10, 2008; Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison, October 18, 2008-January 11, 2009; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., April 1-July 26, 2009; Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford University, September 29, 2010-January 2, 2011
Published References:
Drewal, Henry John. 2008. "Mami as Artists' Muse." Mami Wata: Arts for Water Spirits in Africa and Its Diasporas, ed. by Henry J. Drewal. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California, p. 181, no. 12.2.
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