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Yusuf Grillo Nigeria 1934 –
Yusuf Grillo was born in Lagos in 1934 and commenced studying fine art at the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology in Zaria in 1955. He graduated in 1960 and the following year completed a post-graduate teacher’s certificate. He and his contemporaries at Zaria galvanised one another in 1958 into organising the Zaria Art Society, arguably the first movement of black artists in sub-Saharan Africa. Their advocated aesthetic, termed ‘Natural Synthesis’, embodied a ‘natural, unforced and unconscious synthesis of European media and techniques with forms, styles and content derived from indigenous Nigerian cultures’.1 The paintings included here reflect Grillo’s engagement with the concept of Natural Synthesis in many respects. His technique and his abstraction of the human form into angular planes of flat colour stylistically recall the aesthetics of many artists working in the international style. Yet there are also references to African sources in the imagery: his subjects are African, his palette resonates strongly with the colours of indigenous Yoruba textiles,2 and his imagery reflects his deep interest in traditional African sculpture. As Grillo explains: ‘I surround myself with traditional pieces of art … I collect them almost compulsively and I study them, I analyse them. … The clear-cut definition of planes … has worked its way into my work.’3 His imagery was in essence portraits of people and he never assumed an overt political stance in his work, even through all the turmoil of post-independence Nigeria. Grillo saw art and painting as a genre distinct from propaganda and activism. In 1964 he noted: ‘The artist as a part of society normally reacts one way or the other to all goings-
1 Sylvester Ogbechie, ‘Zaria Art Society and the Uli Movement’ in N’Goné Fall and Jean Loup Pivin (eds), An Anthology of African Art: The Twentieth Century, New York, 2002, p247 2 Ibid, p248 3 Daniel Olayiyan Babalola, ‘The Awo style: A synthesis of traditional and contemporary artistic idioms in Nigeria’, PhD diss, Ohio State University, p260, quoted by J Kennedy, Contemporary African Artists in a Generation of Change, Washington, 1992, p35