30 Jul Sina Yussuff

Fluid, lyrical and expansive are words that come to mind when one thinks about the art of Sina Yussuff. He had a warm, yet uncomplicated way of engaging with his subjects.

Yussuff belonged to a golden generation of Ahmadu Bello students – David Dale and Kolade Oshinowo finished at the same period. The trio would become influential in the Lagos art scene.

He was born in 1943 in Ijebu-Ode and graduated from Ahmadu Bello University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1972. He went on from Zaria to complete a post-graduate degree in Art Gallery and Museum Studies at the University of Manchester, England. He joined the Federal Ministry of Art as a cultural officer in 1973. In the eighties, he was actively engaged in curating the main collection of the National Gallery of Art, working tirelessly to bring together the artworks that would form the nucleus of the National Gallery collection. He worked continuously in the decades after his graduation creating paintings and murals that documented everyday Nigerian life. He exhibited extensively in Lagos, India, Bulgaria and Romania

Yussuff died in an accident in 1994. His artworks, like those of Odutokun and Simon Okeke who also died young, provide the pleasure of greatness experienced and yet that ‘What if’ when you know there could have been so much more.

His artwork ‘Dancing for peace’ is one of our recent artworks.