Odili Donald Odita

Odili Donald Odita was born in Enugu, Nigeria on February 18, 1966, one of four siblings. His parents had gone to university in Iowa from 1963 to 1966. Odita was born during a trip back to Nigeria, but the family returned to the U.S. when the Biafran War began. 

His father, an artist and art historian, had completed a MA in printmaking and an MFA in painting in 1965 in Iowa, on an academic scholarship, and received a PhD in 1970 from Indiana University. 

Odita was surrounded by traditional art, both European and African, thanks to his father’s collection of book and works.”I spent my time when I was little looking at all the books that my dad had, copying images out of them and copying artworks he collected just because I loved to do that.” Odita said. “I would also copy from comic books; I was learning to draw from them just as much as from art historical sources.”

His father founded the African Art History Department at Ohio State.

In 1988, Odita graduated from Ohio State University with a BFA with  Distinction and an Excellence in the Arts Award and went on to receive an MFA from Bennington College in Vermont in 1990. He had a full scholarship at Bennington, with the responsibility of being a teaching assistant and classroom monitor at the school.

Odita moved to Wiiamsburg, Brooklyn after graduating. He needed to find work to support himself and had several jobs that, serendipitously, led to meeting many artists and gallerists who helped bolster his career. 

His first job was at Stitch King, half factory, and half design studio, that made embroidered logos on polo shirts through computer-aided design, CAD work. He then became an intern at the New Museum through 1993 and then an assistant at the Kenkeleba Gallery, then an administrative assistant at the Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn. He also wrote for Flash Art, Art Forum and Nka, Journal of Contemporary African Art.

From 2002 to 2003 Odita was a Visiting Associate Professor in Painting at the University of South Florida in Tampa. From 2000 to 2006 he was an Associate Professor in Painting at the Florida State University, Tallahassee. From 2006 to the present Odita has been an Associate Professor of Painting in Philadelphia at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University. 

Odita’s early works were photo-based but he is primarily a painter of large-scale, colorful works on canvas, plexiglass and installations, that combine colors and patterns of both African and Western culture.

  References:

R.J. Rushmore. A Grand and Gorgeous Abstraction. The Philadelphia Citizen. April 4, 2024.

Ugochukwu C. Smooth Nzewi. An Oral History with Odili Donald Odita by Ugochukwu-Smooth C. Nzewi. BOMB Magazine. December 1, 2020.

Tom McGlynn. Odili Donald Odita with Tom McGlynn. The Brooklyn Rail. October 2020.