• He was born in the Brazillian quarter of Lagos on December 16, 1934.
• Grillo received his primary and secondary education in Lagos. He excelled in both the arts and science, with a particular flair for mathematics. However, it was the visual arts that prevailed when the time came for him to go for higher education. In 1956, he ventured out of Lagos for the first time to attend the Nigerian College of Arts, Science, and Technology (NCAST), now Ahmadu Bello University (ABU). He studied art and majored in painting. At the end of his course, he had also completed a one-year course in education.
• He resumed work at King’s College where he taught art briefly before he was moved to Yaba College of Technology (YCT) where he took over from Paul Mount. That was in 1962. In 1982, he undertook courses in Industrial Design in Germany and at the Royal College of Art in Britain. He was one of the founding fathers of the Society of Nigerian Artists (SNA), which was founded in 1963, with him as the first president. He retired from YCT in 1987. He developed the School of Art, Design, and Printing from scratch, expanded the curriculum to cater to the educational needs of National Diploma (ND) and Higher National Diploma (HND) streams.
• His large murals adorn important public buildings across Nigeria, including the City Hall, Lagos, and the New Nigerian Newspapers in Kaduna. He pioneered stained-glass windows for churches in Nigeria and completed significant sculptural pieces in Lagos. Grillo ranks as one of the pioneer modern Nigerian artists.
• Professor Yusuf Adebayo Cameron Grillo died on August 23, 2021.
Source: Dele Jegede, Ph.D, Professor Emeritus, Miami University. Oxford. Ohio.
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