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Lot 3
Jimoh Bola Akolo(Nigerian, born 1934)A man is to be hanged
Amended
8 October 2025, 15:00 BST
London, New Bond StreetSold for £20,480 inc. premium
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Jimoh Bola Akolo (Nigerian, born 1934)
A man is to be hanged
signed and dated 'J.B.AKOLO/ 1963' (lower right); inscribed '3', 'JIMOH AKOLO', bears an Elloway & Co label inscribed 'D . C/ DUERDEN' and bears a label inscribed 'JIMOH AKOLO/ A MAN IS TO BE/ HANGED' (verso)
oil and acrylic on board
152.3 x 91.5cm (59 15/16 x 36in).
signed and dated 'J.B.AKOLO/ 1963' (lower right); inscribed '3', 'JIMOH AKOLO', bears an Elloway & Co label inscribed 'D . C/ DUERDEN' and bears a label inscribed 'JIMOH AKOLO/ A MAN IS TO BE/ HANGED' (verso)
oil and acrylic on board
152.3 x 91.5cm (59 15/16 x 36in).
Footnotes
Provenance
The collection of Dennis Duerden;
A private UK collection;
By direct descent;
A private collection.
Jimoh Akolo studied under Dennis Duerden, an education officer in the Nigerian colonial service. Given the work's provenance, it is clear that this work was regarded with high esteem from his teacher, hence the work being held in Duerden's personal collection. Painted in 1963, it is likely that the present work was completed either in England or Nigeria and may well have been included in the collection of works exhibited by Akolo at the 1964 Commonwealth exhibition. The foreword for this exhibition catalogue was written by Dennis Duerden. The works were not individually listed in the catalogue. Though it does record that: 'No. 19-34 Painted in 1962-63 in England' and '35-42 Painted in 1963-64 after return to Nigeria'. A label bearing Duerden's initials to the back of the work suggests that this work was previously in the possession of the writer. This further emphasises the work's position as an integrally important piece within Akolo's oeuvre.
Akolo was a founding member of the Zaria Art Society (1958-62), along with Yusuf Grillo, Bruce Onobrakpeya, and other art students at the Zaria branch of the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology. This group, along with their peers in literature, theatre, music constituted a postcolonial modernist vanguard in Nigeria in the early 1960s. Convinced that a new art appropriate for Nigerian and African political independence must combine indigenous and western modernist aesthetics, forms and processes, this generation of artists set about creating spaces—such as the now-legendary journal Black Orpheus and the Mbari Writers and Artists Club, Ibadan—for the production and discourse of Nigerian and African modernism.
Akolo had enrolled at Indiana University in Bloomington from 1962-63 on a master's programme for audio-visual education. The 1960's was a pinnacle time in America in the Civil Rights Movement. The Bloomington state also proceeded with securing the death penalty at this time. The brutality and injustice of the persecution of Black people and the lawful killing of people via hanging is encapsulated within this piece. 1963 marked the last deferral execution in the US before being marked unlawful by 1965 and unconstitutional in the 1970s.
The geometrical composition of this work could be said to derive from a brief period in the early 1960's when Akolo drew inspiration from the geometrically pattered facades of Hausa architecture common to Northern Nigeria. Through pallet and compositional construction, Akolo presents us with fragmented figures contrasted by the splatter of paint in the final touches of his process. It could be said that given this painterly and colour juxtaposition, vibrant colour and depictions of real life are a consistent feature within the artists work.
Saleroom notices
Please note, the artist passed away in 2023.