Renowned Nigerian master wood carver Kasali Akangbe Ogun has been laid to rest following his death last week after a brief illness. Born into a distinguished lineage of Yoruba wood carvers in Osogbo, south-west Nigeria, he carried an ancestral tradition from its local roots onto the global art stage.
Akangbe Ogun was celebrated for a distinctive artistic style marked by elongated faces and fluid, dynamic forms. Nigerian art patron Olufemi Akinsanya described his work as uniquely expressive, combining spiritual depth with visual movement. He was a central figure in the New Sacred Art Movement, founded in the 1960s by the late Austrian-born Nigerian artist and Yoruba priestess Susanne Wenger, which sought to protect the Osun Forest and its sacred river.
The forest, covering about 75 hectares on the outskirts of Osogbo, was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2005 for its cultural and spiritual significance in Yoruba cosmology. Regarded as the dwelling place of Osun, the goddess of fertility, the grove is filled with shrines, sanctuaries, sculptures and artworks dedicated to Osun and other deities, and is considered one of the last surviving sacred groves in Yoruba culture.
Akangbe Ogun was deeply committed to preserving the forest, often intervening personally to prevent prohibited activities such as fishing in the sacred River Osun. The river is the focal point of the annual Osun-Osogbo Festival, a centuries-old celebration that attracts thousands of worshippers and visitors and is one of Nigeria’s most important cultural tourism events.
Works associated with the New Sacred Art Movement are currently featured in the Nigerian Modernism exhibition at Tate Modern in London. Curator Osei Bonsu described Akangbe Ogun as a vital figure whose art brought spiritual resonance to Yoruba devotional practices, adding that his work reflected a life devoted to faith, community and visual poetry.
Although his exact date of birth is unknown, Akangbe Ogun was born around 1945 into the Arelagbayi lineage. While wood carving ran in his family, the tradition had skipped two generations before him. His formal education ended abruptly after the death of his father, and he initially trained as a carpenter. Reflecting later in life, he remarked that he spent just one week in school but went on to lecture university students in the United States, crediting art for his travels and ability to learn languages.
It was while working on the roof of the Iledi Ontooto shrine that Susanne Wenger recognised his talent and encouraged him to pursue wood carving fully, noting that his work was different and distinctive. Wenger later described his creations as ethereal and weightless, calling them a profound eruption of artistic genius.
Akangbe Ogun exhibited widely across Nigeria, Europe and the United States, including shows in Germany, the UK and Lagos. He also worked extensively at the National Black Theatre in Harlem during the 1990s and served as Distinguished Africana Artist-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2013. His work has been praised for transcending the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, folklore and environmental preservation.
Despite international recognition, he lived a modest life in Osogbo, among ordinary people. He was determined to preserve his environment as a living example of traditional Yoruba life, a place where future generations could learn about ancestral customs and values. His carvings, both monumental and small-scale, remain visible throughout the Osun Grove, standing as enduring markers of his mastery.
In reflecting on his legacy, Akangbe Ogun expressed pride that his children had inherited the wood carving tradition, ensuring that his work would live on. He was featured in a short film by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the US last year, commemorating the reopening of its Arts of Africa gallery, and tributes following his death came from across the global creative community.
Summing up his life and purpose, Akangbe Ogun once said he saw himself as “a dot, just a dot, connecting the past to the present, and the future.”
