Muraina Oyelami

Muraina Oyelami (1940) was born in Iragbiji, Osun State, Nigeria. He remains part of the Oshogbo movement and has continued to work with younger generations of artists who have taken to this School of art making. His works have been exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of African Art and feature in the collections of the Studio Museum Harlem and the IWALEWA-Haus in Germany, among others.

Oyelami is considered to be one of the foremost artists in the Oshogbo School, which emerged in South-West Nigeria in the mid-1900s. Fusing traditional Yoruba motifs with what has been interpreted as German Expressionist painting, his work exemplifies the bold lines and colours that frequent the visual art associated this School. Often destroying work with which he is not pleased, Oyelami’s method of blending influences is distinctly different from others in the Oshogbo School, which include Jimoh Buraimoh, Twins Seven-Seven, Adebisi Fabumi, and Jacob Afolabi.

Working primarily with pastel or paint on board, paper, or canvas, Oyelami composes works that make rich reference to folklore and the people and/or places in his surroundings. His palettes of embellished earth tones blur representational forms with abstraction, all within marks that allude to the hard contours of carved, Yoruba antiquities.