Colette Omogbai

Colette Oluwabamise Omogbai is a painter associated with the Surrealist movement. She studied painting at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, and later also studied in the UK and the US, where she received a doctorate at New York University. Due to her early rejection of figurative painting, Omogbai is regarded as a pioneer of abstract art and contemporary painting in Africa. She is also the author of the 1965 manifesto “Man Loves What Is ‘Sweet’ and ‘Obvious,’” in which she criticized the dominant paradigm of representational painting.

Agony presents a synthetically conceived dismembered body. Painted in expressive and intense colours, the fragments of the body stand out strongly from the uniform black background. The intensity of the emotion presented in the painting corresponds to the intensity of the hues, the clarity of the forms, and the expressive manner in which the paints are applied, creating a rough relief on the surface of the canvas. Reflection on the human condition and concentration on the sphere of affect are frequent themes in Omogbai’s work, as is the clear formal expression, which some contemporary critics of the artist found too aggressive and inappropriate in the work of a woman. Agony, like other works by Omogbai, stands in opposition to the narrative figurative painting fitting into the commonly accepted canons of beauty. She experiments, seeking new and blunter formal means, but the point of departure for her works, in accordance with the programmatic premises of Surrealism, is human emotions.

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