20 Nigerian Contemporary Artists you should know.
Uche Okeke: Painter and Art Historian.
Uche Okeke was born in 1933 in Nimo, Anambra State. His interest in art started in his secondary school days when he collected Igbo folktales and wrote his first poems. In 1955, while he was working as a government clerk in Jos, he met Dennis Duerden, an expatriate artist working at the National Museum, Jos. Dennis Duerden encouraged him to study Art. In 1957, he entered the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Zaria, and graduated in 1961with a diploma in Fine Art specializing in Painting. He participated in many ehibitions both locally and internationally. Some of his major designs and projects are the Mural for the Nigerian Independent Pavillion, 1960 in which Demas Nwoko and Bruce Onobrakpeya were jointly commissioned. Some of his folktale drawings are Ogadili the terrible warrior and match of the masquerades, etc.