Adebisi Akanji and his son Adebisi Nurudeen

Adebisi Akanji is one of the leading figures of the New Sacred Art Movement founded by Susanne Wenger in Osogbo in the sixties. Akanji had been trained as a young man to fashion cement decorations for the elaborate 'Brazilian' baroque building style. He participated in art workshops run by Susanne Wenger, Ulli Beier and Georgina Beier in the early 1960s and showed enormous interest and talent in this new direction. Wenger took Akanji under her wing, and he joined her in creating the monumental sculptures standing in the Osun Grove to this day. In addition to the works the Grove, Adebisi Akanji has applied his considerable talent to batiks, sensitive drawings in pen and ink and paintings. Significantly, he developed the talent of his son, Nurudeen, who shares his father’s artistic abilities. Adebisi Nurudeen had become the lead artist doing the restoration in the Grove by 2018, when ill-health prevented the older Adebisi from continuing his life's work. Until then, Akanji had played an extremely important leadership role in the restoration of cement sculptures and monuments in the Sacred Grove from 2008 onwards.