Uzo Egonu was born in Onitsha, Nigeria in 1931 and immigrated to England in 1945, aged 13, to study art in London at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and at St Martin’s School of Art. Despite only returning to Nigeria once in the 1970s, his painting and printmaking, which blurred the distinction between abstraction and figuration, continued to recall his strong West African and Igbo heritage and experiences of diaspora and isolation, influenced by his experiences of European travel and modernist art movements.

Listen to his story here or read the full biography on the BURU database: https://www.buru.org.uk/contributor/uzo-egonu