ATLANTA, GA.- “Bruce Onobrakpeya: The Mask and the Cross” (April 7-July 30, 2023) at the High Museum of Art marks the first solo exhibition at an American museum for the renowned sculptor and printmaker, who is recognized as one of the fathers of Nigerian modernism. The exhibition focuses on the artist’s creative phase from 1967 through 1978 and features more than 40 works that marry Nigerian tradition, folklore and cosmology with Catholic motifs and stories from the Bible, including an early edition of his series “Fourteen Stations of the Cross” from the High’s collection.

“Onobrakpeya is one of the most important artists in Nigeria and has played a central role in shaping contemporary art on the African continent,” said Rand Suffolk, Nancy and Holcombe T. Green, Jr., director of the High. “As an institution with an exceptionally strong and growing collection of Nigerian art, and as one of the few American museums to hold his work, it’s fitting for us to celebrate his importance and continued influence with this exhibition.”

Onobrakpeya (born 1932) began his training as a painter at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science, and Technology at Zaria (affiliated with Goldsmiths, University of London) in 1957. In 1958, he became a founding member of the Zaria Art Society, which formed at the college to decolonize the visual arts and ultimately developed the “natural synthesis” aesthetic philosophy, which fused African artistic tradition with Western techniques to visually articulate a new national and cultural identity in early postcolonial Nigeria.

Onobrakpeya was introduced to printmaking in the early 1960s, after which he began to principally work and innovate in the medium. In 1967, Father Kevin Carroll, a Catholic priest working in Nigeria, commissioned Onobrakpeya to paint a mural of the 14 Stations of the Cross, scenes from the last earthly days of Jesus Christ. A year after completing the mural, Onobrakpeya made a print series of the scenes, in which he portrays these Biblical characters as Nigerian and reimagines the stories in Nigerian settings.

The project ushered in a new phase of Onobrakpeya’s career that continued into the late 1970s. In works from this period, he juxtaposes and blends Christian and Nigerian traditions, reinterpreting Biblical scenes through the lens of midcentury decolonization in Nigeria and adopting compositions from Western art. Grounded in the High’s own edition of the “Fourteen Stations of the Cross” prints (1968), “The Mask and the Cross” showcases other works from this period and examples from later periods that feature themes of religious hybridity and multiplicity, subjects he has returned to throughout his 60-year career.

“Distinct in our strong collection of Nigerian material culture, the High is perfectly poised to engage and contextualize Nigerian creative production across a broad range of time and medium to more comprehensively present the nation’s visual history and, by extension, its social and political history,” said Lauren Tate Baeza, the High’s Fred and Rita Richman curator of African art. “As he is one of the most celebrated visual artists in Nigeria, we made the apt choice to begin these efforts with a monographic exhibition of Onobrakpeya’s prints and reliefs.”

The exhibition is presented in the Special Exhibition Galleries on the Second Level of the High’s Stent Family Wing.