Uche Okeke

An exceptional illustrator, painter, sculptor, and educator.

He was an art and aesthetic theorist, seminal to Nigerian modernism. He received training at the old Nigerian college of Arts Science and Technology, Zaria 1957 to 1961.

As a young artist, Okeke was a founding member of the Zaria Art Society in 1958. The group was a result of political conflict in Nigeria struggling to gain independence and was founded by important protagonists of modernism in Nigerian Art. He then studied stained glass window and mosaic techniques in Germany from 1962 to 1963. Shortly after that, he lectured in painting, drawing and Nigerian Art at Nsukka where he was Head of the Department of Fine and Applied Arts of that University. He also gave creative guidance to the "Asele Nnimo Centre" he founded.

He was chairman of the Zaria Art Society and helped to set the tone for modern Nigerian art practice. He gave most of his time to searching for theoretical basis for Nigerian art and undertook a lecture tour of the United States in 1974.

He has well over 200 honors, distinctions, and professional memberships, publications, awards exhibitions, workshops amongst others.