Tayo Quaye was born in 1954 in Lagos State, Nigeria. He attended St. Gregory’s College, Obalende, where he first met NIgerian master printmaker, Bruce Onobrakpeya. From 1974 - 1976, Quaye worked as a studio assistant and apprentice printmaker at Onobrakeya’s Ovuoma-roro studio. After his apprenticeship, Quaye obtained an OND and HND in Painting from the Yaba College of Technology in 1981. It was during this time that he met and studied under Yusuf Grillo and learnt how to expand the impact of his prints through the use of strong lines, astute stylization, and economy of form. After his education, Tayo Quaye spent the early 1980’s travelling across the United States, where he exhibited and conducted several workshops at universities and art galleries in Arizona, Arkansas and Washington.
Quaye’s early works displayed the influences of his masters, and his prints followed the techniques learnt as Onobrakpeya’s assistant. He quickly expanded beyond these influences when he began to produce large-scale plastocasts (using a technique Onobrakpeya invented). These works were metaphorical depictions of everyday realities, but they also cast a highly critical gaze at the ineptitudes of Nigeria's political culture. Given the long duration of military rule in Nigeria, it was not always easy to be this critical of the government and many Nigerian artists protected themselves by using dense allusions in their artworks instead of direct commentary of political corruption. Quaye is a master of such allusions and benefits from a cultural context in which the viewing public is quite literate in the myriad ways and multiple symbols that Nigerian artists use to insert political commentary into their works.
His works have been featured in several solo and group exhibitions both locally and internationally. His works are in many major collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London and the Smithsonian, Washington.