Oluwole Omofemi valuation
Nigerian painter of proud portraits with voluminous natural hair on bold grounds, who painted the Queen for Tatler.
Oluwole Omofemi was born in 1988 and grew up largely with his grandfather in the Ekotedo community of Ibadan.
What a work by Oluwole Omofemi is worth
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Bio
Oluwole Omofemi was born in 1988 and grew up largely with his grandfather in the Ekotedo community of Ibadan. As a boy he sold beer to buy drawing books, trained informally with another artist, and studied painting at The Polytechnic, Ibadan, taking a National Diploma in 2012 and a Higher National Diploma in 2015. His portraits, mostly of young Black women with voluminous natural hair against flat, saturated grounds, are about pride, identity and Black beauty. In 2022 he painted Queen Elizabeth II for the cover of Tatler's Platinum Jubilee issue, the last portrait of her commissioned in her lifetime. He lives and works in Ibadan.
His paintings have appeared at auction since about 2021, and provenance through his galleries is the usual check.
Ibadan, the Polytechnic and Tatler
His family is from Edo State, and he spent part of his childhood at Agenebode with his mother after his parents separated.
He also works as a curator, organising exhibitions for other artists in Ibadan.
Adekunle, Iriri and The Way We Are
He was born Godwin Oluwole Omofemi, and his grandfather gave him the name Adekunle, Yoruba for the crown filling the house. At Community Grammar School in Mokola he was counted among the best artists, and he set up a kiosk to show his miniatures; he names Tope Fatunmbi and Ebenezer Akinola as his mentors. The afro, shaved heads and tribal marks recur in his portraits. He traces the afro to the civil rights movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s and its message of self-love, and his colours come from the palette of Pop Art. In the Tatler portrait he gave the Queen dark hair, for youth and to bring her into his own style.
His first solo exhibition, Iriri, Yoruba for experience, was at Alexis Gallery in Lagos in 2019. The Way We Are, seventeen paintings in oil and acrylic, followed at Signature African Art's gallery in Mayfair in 2020, with In Our Days there in 2021, the year he also showed Emancipation at the Out of Africa Gallery in Barcelona. The Tatler commission came through the rugby player and collector Maro Itoje, who introduced him to the magazine's editor, Richard Dennen. In 2021 he started the Oluwole Omofemi Foundation, which has given food and aid to widows in Ekotedo, and he keeps a two-room studio in Ibadan where he trains apprentices.
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