Abiodun Olawale Olaku was born in 1958 in Ibadan. He completed his Higher National Diploma at the Yaba College of Technology between 1976 and 1981 before joining the Federal civil service, where he served while creating art for the next seven years, resigning in February 1989 to pursue a full-time studio practice. Drawing influences from Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrandt Van Rijn, Claude Monet, Yusuf Grillo, Kolade Oshinowo—his former teacher and Ben Enwonwu’s series on the Onitsha pantheon masquerade, Olaku combines a calm realism with subtle contrasts of light and shade to convey a heightened sense of drama in his canvases. Working from dark to light, he builds up his forms in increasingly lighter tones from a fairly consistent underlay of grays, and then applies the strongest highlights. Olaku’s success is hinged largely on this masterful play of shadows and half-lights in creating mood and suggesting thought and feeling. The period from 1984 to 1989 was the most defining one in the young artist’s development.
Olaku won two major portrait commissions of former Nigerian leaders, Generals Olusegun Obasanjo and Yakubu Gowon for the National Gallery of Art. In 1985, He participated in Offerings from the Gods, the annual exhibition of the Lagos chapter of the Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA), sponsored by the Federal Department of Culture. It was his first major show, and since then, he has participated in several other significant exhibitions at home and abroad. He is a member of the Society of Nigeria Artists (SNA); a founding member, inaugural vice president and trustee of the Guild of Professional Fine Artists of Nigeria (GFA); and a founder and trustee of The Universal Studios of Art, National Theatre, Lagos.