Since respect for elders is all the rage at the moment, we thought we’d praise the ultimate elder, Bruce Onobrakpeya – the storyteller of Agbarha-Otor, master printmaker, probably Nigeria’s most famous living artist, and certainly the most influential over the past 5 decades.
The artwork ‘Musicians’, is a rare sketch on aluminium printer’s plate done in 1979 during his visit to Lehigh University, Pennsylvania.
It might look like a pencil sketch but it’s not. It’s carved with printer’s stone on an aluminium printing sheet.
This sketch may have come from his experience while at Pennsylvania or from a show in Lagos. Hard to tell. It has the feeling though of a memory quickly captured, expressing the fleeting nature of the encounter, as well as, the fluidity of the musicians.
Bruce Onobrakpeya turns 87 this year. A true elder.
