Art House: Veteran Uche Okeke Makes Artist Of The Week

Published 08 July 2017 in Press

Channels Television

Uche Okeke was born on the 30th of April, 1933 in Anambra state. He attended three primary schools in Kaduna, Onitsha and Imo state during which he had begun to demonstrate an interest in drawing and painting.

He studied Fine Art at the Nigerian Institute of Science, Arts and Technology, where he had participated in Nigerian drawings And paintings with Bernard Fagg as a curator.

Station of the Cross I, Uche Okeke, 1976.

Uche Okeke has created so many works like; Signs Of Life 1(1962), Stations of the Cross 1 and 2(1976), Flowers Of The Primeval Forest (1982). He has inspired so many Nigerian and African artist and even some of the world Avant-garde.

In 1958, he created the Asele Institute and Documentation Center, Nimo, Nigeria and became a Founder and director till date. He became an important person of the defiant movement (natural synthesis) and His ideas contained some of the most profound expressions of art.

Flowers of the Primeval Forest, Uche Okeke, 1982.

Uche Okeke has won about 11 awards and some of which are; poetry prize in a national literary competition (1960), British Council Bursary Award (1973) and presidential award of being a member of the federal republic by the then President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo in 2001.

He later died on the 5th of January, 2016 in his native hometown, Nimo, and Anambra state at the age of 82.

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