Abayomi Barber was born into a middle-class Yoruba family in Ile-Ife, Osun State, Nigeria, in 1928. In September 1960, Barber arrived in England to study the Preservation of Antiquities at the British Museum and to enrol at the Central School of Arts and Crafts to enhance his bronze-casting techniques. Barber's powerful, naturalistic sculptural portrayals would endear him to Croatian Jewish sculptor, Oscar Nemon, after which Barber would become one of the main artists assisting Nemon on five sculptures of Winston Churchill. Abayomi Barber died in Nigeria in 2021.
Sculptor and painter Abayomi Barber was born into a middle-class Yoruba family in Ile-Ife, Osun State, southwestern Nigeria, in 1928. Barber's primary and secondary schooling took place under the British colonial Christian educational system. He stayed in Ile-Ife throughout his early education, first attending St Peter's Anglican School, then St Stephen's School, graduating in 1948. Barber showed an aptitude for art and crafts from an early age, and by the late 1940s, he was exhibiting and developing his painting and woodcarving skills, winning highly sought-after prizes and commissions. Barber decided to leave Ile-Ife to further his artistic practice, arriving in Lagos in 1955 to begin a sculpture training course at Yaba College of Technology (YABATECH). Barber's time as a sculptor student brought him into contact with the British abstract sculptor, Paul Mount, known for his use of 'classic modernism' (Bird, 2009, np), combined with Yoruba woodcarving techniques. However, shortly after, Barber left formal education following his father's death and entered the workforce.
Barber's sculptural acumen came to the attention of the progressive Nationalist Nigerian statesman, and first Premier of Western Nigeria, Chief Obafemi Awolowo (Macauley, 2010, np). Between 1957 and 1958, under the patronage of Chief Awolowo, Barber secured a junior position with an international team of antiquity experts at Yoruba Historical Research (YHR). The team consisted of prominent Nigerian and British scholars of African art history and material culture, notably the eminent curator and anthropologist, William Fagg, Keeper of the Department of Ethnography at the British Museum in London. In 1960, with the ongoing support of Chief Awolowo, Barber received a scholarship from the YHR to study art conservation overseas, having gained particular skills and knowledge through his participation in the YHR team's excavation of ancient naturalistic sculptures and life-size castings of Yoruba royalty from the ancient Kingdom of Ife. Barber then left Nigeria to continue his formal art education in England.
In September 1960, Barber arrived in London to begin the Preservation of Antiquities programme at the British Museum (Odiboh, 2009, p. 79) and he also enrolled at the Central School of Arts and Crafts to study bronze casting techniques. As part of Chief Awolowo's patronage, Barber would simultaneously work on the production of a nine-foot bronze sculpture of the Chief in celebration of his statesmanship and career. (Odiboh, 2009, p.79). His peers and lecturers admired Barber's technical sculptural skills, and he secured highly coveted studio positions with Irish sculptor Edward Delaney and the acclaimed Croatian Jewish sculptor, Oscar Nemon. According to Abiola, Barber fondly recalled working at Nemon's studio, situated in Queen Elizabeth II's private garden in St James Palace. (Abiola, nd). Barber's powerful, naturalistic sculptural portrayals would endear him to Nemon, after which Barber would become 'the principal artist for Nemon on five sculptures of Winston Churchill, for the House of Commons in London, Brussels, Israel, Oxford, and West Ham' (Odiboh, 2009, p. 80). Barber's command of sculptural realism is exquisitely conveyed in his bronze work, Ola Edu II (c.1960-70s) in which he uses a patina of layered golden browns that accentuate the softness of the young woman's facial skin. Barber positions her head tilted pensively to one side, her eyes fixed, looking into the distance. Barber's conceptualisation is inpired by classical sculpture, yet it is also unapologetically African, with gradients in the separated sections of the raised crown, like cornrows, conveying symbols of African sovereignty.
Barber was a prolific artist, producing figurative pencil drawings, ink work, and paintings ranging in style accross surrealism, realism, and abstract modernism, becominh a pioneer of Nigerian modernism. His later landscapes were visions of romantic, colourful utopias. Peace and distant places (1982), uses pastels to create foliage in orange, green, and yellow, while a single tree trunk is boldly filled in aqua blue. For the sky, the artist mixes hues of blue, purple, grey, and white to form softly rolling clouds. Similarly, in Dreamscape (2003, oil on canvas), Barber uses muted autumnal colours to depict a rocky plateau dotted with trees and jagged boulders, set between illuminated mountain ranges. His skillful blending of colours softens the harshness of the terrain, while dark shadows in the foreground gently decrease as the approaching swirls of white clouds draw near.
Abayomi Barber spent eleven years in England and returned to Nigeria in 1971, where he was offered an Arts Fellow role at the School of African and Asian Studies, University of Lagos. During his time in the UK he exhibited at the Africa Centre (1968). In 1972, in collaboration with the University of Lagos, he founded the Barber Artists Workshop, which later became the Barber School, advancing Yoruba iconography and symbolism in Nigerian modern art practices. Abayomi Barber died in Nigeria in 2021. Posthumouusly, his work fetured in the exhibition Nigerian Modernism, held at Tate Modern (2025-26). Barber's work is not currently represented in the UK public domain; collections are in the Osahon Okunbo Foundation and Nigerian Institutions.
Joy Onyejiako.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Abayomi Barber]
Publications related to [Abayomi Barber] in the Ben Uri Library