Alex Nwokolo
Alexander Azukaego Nwokolo was born in 1963. He spent most of his early childhood
building bird cages and setting traps made of okpa bamboo. This period would later have an impact on his artistic career, developing into his mastery of mixed media forms of expression. Soon, he began to pay frequent visits to the art/ painting club at the National Museum Onikan, Lagos where he took up painting. Nwokolo completed a Higher National Diploma between 1986 and 1991 at the Federal Polytechnic, Auchi and received the Rector’s Certificate of Excellence and the American Ambassador’s Award upon graduation.
Nwokolo is regarded as one of Nigeria’s most talented colorists and views his involvement in the Auchi School, together with his interest in the Impressionists as key to his artistic development. Adopting an instinctive and methodological system over the years, his works are concurrently experimental and examine mainly the technique of creative colouring and the effect of light and dark on colours. Nwokolo’s canvases and corrugated galvanised steel sheets are laced with textural qualities, often incorporating found and recycled materials. Significantly, the paint, applied boldly as thick impasto, which, worked by deft strokes of the palette knife, accumulates weight as it builds, in repeated planes, into a thick and harmonious carpet. His recent works probe social problems, global issues concerning the environment and economic stability. Nwokolo’s oeuvre explores the urban Nigerian space, aesthetics and politics.
Alex Nwokolo has participated in several significant exhibitions and fairs such as Now and Beyond, Alexis Galleries, Lagos (2021); Impact, Hour Glass Gallery, Lagos (2020); Authenticity of Thought, Sachs Gallery, Lagos, (2012); African Way of Art, Galerie Vendome, France (2011); Johannesburg FNB Art Fair (2011) and (2010); African Festival of the Arts, Chicago (2014); The Road Less Travelled, Artistic Licence Gallery, Victoria Island, Lagos (2008). He is a member of the Society of Nigerian Artists and the Guild of Professional Fine Artists.