The family of Professor Yusuf Grillo has announced the passing away of patriarch, who died in the early hours of Monday, August 23, 2021.
According to a release made available to Freelanews and signed Otunba Babatunde Grillo, the veteran painter died at the popular Gbagada General Hospital in Lagos state after ‘brief illness’.
Professor Yusuf Grillo, who lived at 28, Ogunlowo Street, Ikeja was a contemporary artist and a prominent member of the art community.
Grillo was born in Lagos and attended Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Zaria, where he received a diploma in Fine Arts and a post-graduate diploma in education. In 1966, he left Zaria for study at the academic halls of Cambridge University and later traveled to Germany and the United States of America.
He was considered one of Nigeria’s outstanding and academically trained painters; he emerged to prominence and international recognition in the 1960s and 1970s, while exhibiting a large collection of his early works.
Grillo made use of his western art training in many of his paintings, combining western art techniques with traditional Yoruba sculpture characteristics. His preference for color blue in natural settings paintings was sometimes similar to the adire or resist-dye textiles used in Nigeria.
He was a former Head of the Department of Art and Printing at Yaba College of Technology.
He, aged 87, is survived by children and grandchildren. May his soul rest in peace.
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