Susanne Wenger

Susanne Wenger (Graz, 1915 - Osogbo, 2009) was an Austrian artist who settled in Nigeria and became deeply involved in Yoruba religion, eventually receiving the chieftaincy title Adunni Olorisha. Her work and her conservation efforts make her a distinctive figure in twentieth-century African art, especially in connection with the Osogbo school.

She studied pottery at the School of Applied Arts in Graz and later at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, where she learned the fresco technique. After the war she co-founded the Vienna Art Club and produced experimental, spiritually inspired works, including surreal drawings in colored pencil. In 1949 she met the linguist Ulli Beier in Paris. The two married in London and moved to Nigeria.

In Nigeria she engaged with African arts and crafts and worked in adire textile art. After a bout of tuberculosis, she turned towards the Yoruba religion, helped by Ajagemo, a priest of Obatala at Ede. She later settled in Osogbo, where she devoted herself to rebuilding shrines and religious carvings, particularly the shrine dedicated to the river goddess Oshun.

Her best-known work is in the Osun Sacred Grove, beside the river of the same name. There she worked with the Public Works Department and local artists to eradicate termites damaging the shrines and to rebuild carvings and buildings in wood and cement. Her sculptures depict the activities of the orishas as well as the social life of both adherents and non-adherents of the traditional religion. She founded the school known as New Sacred Art, a branch of the wider Osogbo school.

Her protective work proved decisive: the grove became a national monument in 1965 and was later designated a World Heritage Site. Sculptures made by her followers and local artists there have belonged to the UNESCO site since 2005, and that year the Nigerian government admitted her to the Order of the Federal Republic. Her life at the grove is also the subject of The Oshun Diaries, a memoir by Diane Esguerra (2019).