Nigeria has lost one of her finest contemporary artists. On the 17th of January 2017, the works and legacy of Ben Osaghae are what remain as testimony of the life of a remarkable artist.
Ben Osaghae was born in June 1962 in Benin, Edo State. He graduated from the Auchi Polytechnic, Edo in 1986, where he specialized in painting. Between 1991 and 1995, he taught painting, drawing and art history at his alma mater and afterwards, he moved to Lagos where he practiced in his studio for over two decades.
Osaghae’s works are deeply intellectual. His paintings were drawn from memory and in his own words, he placed a lot of premium on his titles. Unlike most artworks, his works are not naturalistic and are intended to be so. “I don’t worry about making my paintings ‘naturalistic,’ rather I want them to be descriptive,” he had pointed out to Richard McCoy.
His paintings revolve around social, political and economic issues in Nigeria. On these topics, it may be needless to look for superfluous words to describe, as his paintings and titles give narratives which the keen mind should be apt to understand.
By all who have been inspired by his life, who have found meaning in his works, who have reaped from the richness of his conversations, Ben Osaghae will be missed.
- Castellote, Jess. Ben OSAGHAE. The Untiring Chronicler. 2010, jesscastellote.wordpress.com.
- Castellote, Jess & Adetunji, Akinyemi. Ben Osaghae. Visual Chronicles of a Society in Flux. Bookcraft Ltd., Ibadan, 2014.
- Okwuosa, Tobenna. “Archiving Nigerian Contemporary Existential Realities: Ben Osaghae and His Dialectical Paintings.” Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies MCSER Publishing Rome-Italy, vol. 2, No. 3, November 2013.
- McCoy, Richard. No Preservatives | Looking Back to Nigeria: Ben Osaghae’s Critical Observations [Part III]. 2012, magazine.art21.org.