Twins Seven Seven was a Nigerian musician, painter and sculptor, who represented Oshogbo school. Twins Seven-Seven’s works reflect a highly personal cosmology and mythology, creating an independent universe full of people, animals, gods and plants, inspired by the Yoruba culture.
Background
Twins Seven Seven was born on May 3, 1944 in Ogidi, Nigeria. He was the sole surviving twin of a set of seven successive twins born into the Bashorun royal family of the Yoruba people; the son of Aitoyeje, a Muslim from Ibadan, and Mary, a Christian from Ogidi. His grandfather was king of Ibadan in the 1890s.
Career
Prince Twins Seven Seven began his career in the 1960s in workshops conducted by Ulli and Georgina Beier in Osogbo, a Yoruba town in southwestern Nigeria. Since then, he became one of the most well known artists of the Osogbo School.
Twins Seven Seven began drawing in pen and ink on paper, but soon began using ink and paint on large sheets of laminated plywood. His subject matter was Yoruban myths, many of them recited to him by his mother, but others absorbed through the novels of Amos Tutuola and Daniel O. Fagunwa. In a consciously naïve style, he depicted village scenes, animals and deities, especially the goddess Oshun, filling in outlines and borders with jewel-colored patterns based on traditional textiles.
In 1972, Twins Seven Seven held the post of a teacher in the United States at Merced College in California and at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, Deer Isle.
In 1986, he was a member of the jury for the Nedlaw Baringa exhibitions at the National Gallery in Zimbabwe.
In the 1990s, his works were exhibited at major exhibitions in Spain, Finland, Mexico, the Netherlands, England, Germany and the United States.
In 2000, the Indianapolis Museum of Art opened a wing devoted to contemporary African art with an exhibition featuring the painter's works, which was also included in an exhibition that year at the National Museum of African Art at the Smithsonian.