FOR ABAYOMI BARBER, THERE WAS SO MUCH FULFILMENT IN RETICENCE…

Okechukwu Uwaezuoke

Quietly, Oladimeji Abayomi Adebayo Alade Barber must have departed this life on Sunday, December 26… Quietly, because not much has been heard about this grand old man of the Nigerian visual art scene since he was feted by the National Gallery of Art at the National Museum’s premises, Onikan, Lagos on Tuesday, May 18 last year.

That event was a belated celebration of his 92nd birthday, which was actually on October 23 of the previous year. Many would easily recall that that was a period when cultural activities – like everything else – had ground to a halt on account of the nationwide anti-police brutality protests, tagged #EndSARS. Besides, the COVID-19 protocols, which frowned at large gatherings, were still in force.

With a hint of prescience, the NGA – as the National Gallery of Art is abbreviated – thought the icon deserved an elaborate ceremony. After all, this was a man who was credited with tacitly establishing an art movement, which is known in the art circles as the Abayomi Barber Art School.

This fact was further corroborated by the large turnout to the event, which was graced by the art community’s crème de la crème. At the event’s opening ceremony, which was held at the decrepit National Museum’s quadrangle, the NGA’s director-general Ebeten W. Ivara was in the good company of the representatives of the information, culture and tourism minister and kindred parastatals, among other industry’s big wigs.

Barber, who was known to have persistently shunned the Western-coloured perceptions of African art, asserted his artistic independence through his naturalistic expressions. Known for his proficiency in the visual arts from as far back as when he drew portraits of his maternal uncle – the then Ooni of Ife Oba Adesoji Aderemi – as a child, he later developed an early interest in sculpting after his primary school years’ excursions to the local shrines.

Art would open further doors for him, one of which granted access to then-premier of the Western Region Chief Obafemi Awolowo. It was through the latter, whose portrait he did alongside that of the then Western Region’s education minister Stephen Awokoya, that he was able to get a scholarship to study at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, the UK from 1960 to 1962.

In his early years in London, he studied the preservation and restoration of antiquities and moulded a statue of Chief Awolowo. But his scholarship abruptly came to an end after a crisis in the Western Region saw his benefactor relinquish power. He would subsequently move on to studying casting and moulding at Mancini and Tozer Studios, worked as an art assistant at a studio owned by the Irish sculptor Edward Delaney and collaborated later with the Croatian sculptor Oscar Nemon.

Eleven years later, in 1971, Barber returned to Nigeria, where he became an arts fellow of the University of Lagos’s School of African and Asian studies, which is now known as the Centre for Cultural Studies. It was the following year that he was commissioned to produce a portrait of the visiting Ethiopian head of state, Emperor Haile Selassie.

Though best remembered for his exploits in the visual arts – with his famous Yemoja and surrealistic landscape paintings as well as Ali Maigoro sculptures engraved in the industry’s consciousness – Barber also had a strong passion for music and was known to have had a preference for tenor saxophone. In his pre-London eyes, he had even joined a band owned by one Dele Bamgbose with his friend, Kunle Sijuade.

“One of the interesting aspects of his life was his penchant for self-improvement and a large appetite to hone his innate skill as an artist,” NGA’s Ivara said about Barber in his tribute. “He was never satisfied. He always yearned for more and by so doing blazed a trail in visual arts. He was an avatar, a patriarch and path founder who will remain indelible in our minds.”

In his tribute, the Nigerian-American emeritus professor Dele Jegede – who stylises his name in lower case as “dele jegede” – described Barber in his tribute as “a man who elevated reticence, humility, and niggardliness to an art”. Barber’s “dry but penetrating sense of humour”, he added, “is perhaps not as well-known as his incredible capacity for creative intuition, for Abayomi Barber continually ruptured the artificial boundaries and epistemological compartments installed between art and craft; art and music; and finally, music and theatre—areas in which his prodigiousness is yet to be fully outed.”