Professor
Painting

Odili Donald Odita

ON LEAVE, FALL 2024

Odili Donald Odita is an abstract painter exploring color both in the figurative historical context and in the sociopolitical sense.
 
In recent years, Odita was commissioned to paint several large-scale wall installations including Newark Museum (2017); Nasher Museum of Art, Durham (2015); Mural Arts Philadelphia (2016); Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut (2015); Savannah College of Art and Design (2012) and the United States Mission to the United Nations, New York (2011).
 
Odita has had several exhibitions in museums and institutions across the globe including Prospect.4, the United States Biennial in New Orleans (2017-2018) and Represent: 200 Years of African American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (2015).
 
Odita is represented by the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York City and the Stevenson Gallery in Cape Town, South Africa.
 
MFA, Bennington College, Vermont, 1990
BFA with Distinction, Excellence in the Arts Award, Ohio State University, 1988

Selected Work
Odita, O. D. (2017, February 16). Whitescapes: Odili Donald Odita. The Art Assignment. PBS Digital
     Studios. Retrieved from http://www.theartassignment.com/assignments/whitescapes

Odita, O. D. (2015). Rift [Acrylic on canvas]. In G. D. Shaw (Ed.), Represent: 200 Years of African American
     Art (pp. 197). New Haven, CT:  Yale University Press. 

K. Stiles, & P. H. Selz (Eds.). (2012). Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of
     Artists' Writings (pp. 89, 190). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Odita, O. D. (2011). Serrated, 2008 [Acrylic on canvas]; Brave Men Run [Acrylic on canvas]; Crash, 2008
     [Acrylic on canvas]; Here and There [Acrylic on canvas]; Post-Perfect [Acrylic on canvas]. In B.
     Schwabsky (Ed.), Vitamin P2: New Perspectives in Painting (pp. 226-229). London, UK: Phaidon Press.

Odita, O. D. (2009). Open, 1999, [Acrylic on Plexiglass]; Give Me Shelter, 2007 [Installation view, 52nd
     Venice Biennale, 2007]; At the Edge of the World, 2008 [Acrylic latex on wall, Installation at the
     Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town]. In O. Enwezor, & C. Okeke–Agulu, Contemporary African Art Since
     1980 (pp. 42–43, 210, 216, 309, & 328). Bologna, Italy: Damiani editore.