Odili Donald Odita: A Survey of Context

The Hyde Collection presents a mid-career survey of work by Odili Donald Odita (b. 1966), a Nigerian-American painter based in Philadelphia. One of today’s best-known abstract artists, Odita creates vividly kaleidoscopic works that combine the geometric patterns of Nigerian textiles with the language of American hard edge abstraction and color field painting. 

Odita’s paintings present a palpable dialogue between African and Western aesthetics, thematizing the possibility of coexistence within cultural diversity —and of light and beauty rising above racial conflict. With angular, taped forms in contiguous noncomplementary colors—rays of neon, side by side with earth tones—Odita’s paintings often clash in compellingly uncomfortable ways. Sometimes his jagged patterns evoke violent histories, with burning crosses or confederate flags emerging from mazes of shapes. Yet Odita’s large-scale paintings resolve into a message of human transformation, where differences engender specific harmonies, and art reshapes social possibilities. 

 In addition to paintings, Odili Donald Odita  at The Hyde will include examples from his Black Album, consisting of advertisements, photographs, and news clippings related to race and Black American culture that the artist collected in the 1990s. 

Odita has had solo exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; the Newark Museum of Art, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, and many other venues. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and other institutions. Odita participated in the 52nd Venice Biennale, in the Italian Pavilion curated by Robert Storr. 

 Odita’s work is in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Pérez Art Museum, Miami; Philadelphia Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and The Studio Museum in Harlem. He has created monumental mural commissions for the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Savannah College of Art and Design, and Astor Park in Columbus, Ohio. 

 Odili Donald Odita is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, the David Kordansky Gallery in Los Angeles, and the Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa. He is a professor of painting at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University, Philadelphia. 

 The artist will give a gallery talk on Saturday, January 25, 2025, at 11:00 am.

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