Middle Art, b. 1936
Biography

Middle Art is the professional name of Augustine Chigbata Okoye, born in 1936 in Akamkpisi, Nri, in present-day Anambra State, Nigeria. He trained first with Young Art in Onitsha and, in 1960, spent seven months studying design and drawing under Gills Art. Around 1960 he began working as a self-employed artist and signpainter in Onitsha, and by 1962 had established his own workshop there producing portraits and barber-shop signage.

In 1967 Okoye moved to Ile-Ife under the sponsorship of the writer and critic Ulli Beier, taking part in the Oshogbo art workshops and working as an independent studio artist within that circle of largely self-taught painters before later returning to Onitsha. His paintings, often rendered in a direct, narrative style, frequently addressed the Nigerian Civil War and its aftermath, as seen in works such as “Bombing Operation Warpout,” “Firing Squad,” “One Nigeria” and “War is Not Good.”

He held solo exhibitions at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ife (1971), at the Goethe-Institut in Lagos (1972–1974), at the French Cultural Center in Lagos (1989), and under the title “Middle Art” at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin (1990). His work was included in more than twenty group exhibitions internationally between 1965 and 1989, among them a 1974 showing at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and exhibitions in Vienna, Prague, Helsinki, Amsterdam and Berlin. His paintings are held in the collections of Iwalewa-Haus, Bayreuth; the Museum für Völkerkunde, Frankfurt; and the Náprstek Museum, Prague.

source: Biographical Legacy and Research Foundation (blerf.org)