Artist and His Creations

 

Tunde Odunlade

  1954 - PRESENT (biography)

1990 /1991 

color linocut with heavy embossing 

18 1/8 x 23 5/8" image 

pencil, lower right 

Unique Artist's Proof, outside the edition of 50. 

Pencil titled in lower right; artist's name and the year "90" carved into the block; pencil inscribed "Ife" after the signature and dated "91". 

 

ivory wove 

proof 

 

23654 

$1,800.00 

Written in the lower margin of this linocut is the word "Ife". This may refer to the ancient city in southwest Nigeria - considered the origin of all mankind in the Yoruba worldview - or to the Yoruban word meaning "love". Yoruba is the word for the ethnic group of West African people living primarily in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. Tunde Odunlade himself is from the city of Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, Nigeria.

Odunlade combines traditional West African imagery and contemporary methods to create his art, which includes linocuts, textile design, and a technique he developed called "floatagraph" which uses batik, marbelizing, and calligraphy. In "Artist and his Creations" his composition is divided into eight sections that address a different part of Yoruban culture: music, religion, nature, celebration, and more, and his use of overlapping abstract shapes is reminiscent of the batik dye process. This linocut, which is deeply embossed into the paper and echoes the tactile nature fabrics, is equally traditional and abstract at once.

The town of Ife was founded around 500 B.C. and is the oldest Yoruba city. According to the Yoruba worldview, Ife is the place of origin of all humankind and is therefore of particular religious and political importance. The city is still considered the cultural center of the Yoruba people.