Odili Donald Odita '90

Image of Odili Donald Odita

Odili Donald Odita is a Nigerian-born, Philadelphia-based abstract painter whose work has been shown in museums and art institutions around the globe.

In recent years, Odita has been commissioned to paint several large-scale wall installations including The United States Mission to the United Nations in New York (2011), the Savannah College of Art and Design (2012), New York Presbyterian Hospital (2012), New Orleans Museum of Art (2011), Kiasma, Helsinki (2011), and the George C. Young Federal Building and Courthouse in Orlando, Florida (2013).

Odita’s work, which explores color both in the figurative art historical context and also in the sociopolitical sense, has been the subject of several solo exhibitions including Savannah College of Art and Design; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston; Studio Museum in Harlem; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita; and Princeton University.

He has been the recipient of a Penny McCall Foundation grant in 1994, a Joan Mitchell Foundation grant in 2001, and a Louis Comfort Tiffany grant in 2007. Also in 2007, his large installation Give Me Shelter was featured prominently in the 52nd Venice Biennale exhibition Think with the Senses, Feel with the Mind, curated by Robert Storr.