Ayegbayo Damola is a Nigerian painter and the founder of “Victor Arts Enterprises”. a thought laboratory dedicated to the promotion and development of contemporary African art in Nigeria, that boasts of a multi-disciplinary room which doubles as an exhibition and co-working space, as well as a residency area.
He is one of the first Nigerian artists to gain international recognition and he is arguably Africa’s most influential artist of the 21st century. He was born in western Nigeria. Osun state, created in 1991 from the eastern third of Oyo state. His mother was a retired school principal and his grandfather was a painter that taught him his early painting skills.
He has been practicing art since he was young, but he started fully immediately he graduated from the school of art 2012.
Over the years he has learnt a lot from iconic and Masters of Arts like Bola Opadiran who made a great impact in his art, also Wale Ajayi who was his art lecturer while in school
His first series of artworks are, black pride, vision of hope, and culture series. For him Being an artist in Nigeria is not really an easy journey, a lot of challenges from the environment, the way people see art as irrelevant and as a child’s play, when everything that revolves around them is art, their origin is artistic as Africans and our culture, also art is one for the best and lucrative means to earn a good living. Also him growing up in an environment both government and people around are not supporting art as a profession.
The name of his painting style is called ÀBÈFÉ meaning ( pleaded to be loved) which is his native name. His craft is an expressionism style of art, he use portraits of beautiful black women to speak to society about morals, good behavior, love, and unity. an image of a black beautiful woman always reminds him of how strong his mother trained and brought him up with love and good morals helping him to discover his real self, the concept of using a black woman is a great reference to his loving mother and the role Other women had played in his life, their importance and existence in the world can not be underestimated
He has the largest number of painting and visual artworks in Osun State and among the recongnise artist in Nigeria with over 1500 works. He has a book written by Nigerian public speaker and Writer about his artistic life circle title ‘ Art is life’.
Ayegbayo was admitted to the school of arts in Obafemi awolowo university on September 2008 where he was trained in the Western tradition of representational art. It is around this period that he began to experiment with forms in relation to Nigerian folklore, myths and legends. Much of his work uses stylistic elements and compositions derived from traditional African decorative arts.
He is one of the most recognised male African contemporary artists and his work has been exhibited at New York, USA, Canada etc. He applies photographic transfers, paint, collage, pencil drawing, marble dust and fabric, among other things, to large-scale, multimedia paintings that well express his multifaceted and layered cultures background
Ayegbayo was inspired by his late grandfather who was a painter, sculptor and ceramist from a tender age. He is a Visual Artist with a demonstrated history of working in the arts and crafts industry. Skilled in Paintings and Drawings.
His works convey the power of the beauty of black African women, the reality of life and morals through color and black beautiful women’s faces.
Ayegbayo art work is in the collections of Saatchi Art, United States. His paintings have been featured in International Art Exhibitions in Canada, Australia, England, London, Norway, Washington and Lagos.
He was also on Saatchi Art Non fungible token (NFT) project and has featured in art catalogs that was distributed to homes in the USA.