Akinola Lasekan is counted among the pioneers of Nigerian modern painting, active alongside Aina Onabolu in the generation that brought European-style easel painting and portraiture into Nigerian art. Born in Owo, he was largely self-taught at first and later received instruction from the colonial art educator Kenneth Murray. In the 1930s he worked as a textile designer and illustrated Bible stories for the CMS Bookshop, and he ran an art correspondence course. From 1944 to 1966 he was the political cartoonist of Nnamdi Azikiwe's newspaper the West African Pilot, where his drawings satirised colonial rule and made him one of Nigeria's first notable cartoonists. In 1961 he joined the fine arts department of the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. As a painter he is best known for academic, naturalistic portraits of Nigerian sitters in traditional dress, and for genre and historical scenes drawing on Yoruba myth and history, such as 'The Emir in Council' (1941) and 'Iya Agba' (1958). He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His portraits from the 1940s-50s are now well established at auction, generally selling in the low-to-mid five figures in pounds.
School or movement: Nigerian modernism - early pioneers (academic naturalism); political cartooning.
Influenced by Kenneth C. Murray, European academic portraiture, Yoruba history and myth, Nnamdi Azikiwe / nationalist press.
Influenced students at University of Nigeria, Nsukka.
