Typology of Forms of Painting in Nigeria

Abstract

Painting in the 21^st century artistic terrain of Nigeria is very vibrant. While scholarship on Nigerian art and painting are of relatively appreciable richness, the typology of the physical forms of painting has apparently not been of concern in scholarship. Whereas, the physical forms of painting are important in the interplay of contents and the overall significance of paintings. This study is therefore a typological analysis of forms of painting in Nigeria and was conducted with a view to determining the variations in the forms of painting. Samples for the study were 1,120 paintings, produced between 1970 and 2013 by academically trained artists, randomly collected in field work conducted between 2010 and 2013. Detailed typology was done using size and shape, media and genre. The study established that the paintings come in three shapes in order of preference and occurrence viz: rectangle, square and circle.  For size, they come in a pecking order of occurrence of medium size, large size and small size. Media wise, oil paint is the most preferred and next to which is acrylic, mixed media, water colour, ink, gouache/poster and pastel. Four genre categories respectively of figural painting, landscape painting, still-life painting and non-objective painting were established.

Keywords: Typology, Variation, Forms, Painting, Art, Nigeria.