Odili Donald Odita creates paintings and spatial environments that explore the emotional and cultural force of color. His compositions unfold through precise planes and shifting rhythms, revealing color as a field where memory, perception, and lived experience meet. Working between the languages of African and Western abstraction, Odita brings a vibrant sense of movement to every surface he engages, from canvas to large scale architectural installations. His work transforms space into an active experience, inviting viewers to reflect on how color shapes the way we understand the world..

           He has presented major projects at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum, the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the Contemporary Dayton, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Odita represented the United States at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and continues to expand the possibilities of color as a medium of perception, emotion, and social reflection. He is Professor of Painting, Drawing and Sculpture at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University.

           Born in Enugu, Nigeria and based in Philadelphia, Odita has spent more than three decades developing a practice that bridges painting, architecture, and public art. His installations appear in museums, universities, civic spaces, and stadiums throughout the United States and abroad. Each project is guided by the specific qualities of place, allowing color to animate the flow, light, and atmosphere of its environment. Odita approaches abstraction as a site of connection, where cultural histories and contemporary realities can be seen through a shared visual language.