Beier, Georgina (1938--)

Georgina Beier, née Betts, was born in London in 1938. At age sixteen she enrolled in the Kingston Art School; however, she dropped out after fifteen months, later claiming that the academic atmosphere risked impeding her personal development. In 1959 she moved to Nigeria where she met and married Ulli Beier, becoming his second wife. In 1964 Beier began conducting annual art workshops at the Mbari Mbayo Club (Osogbo, Nigeria), where she encouraged her students to be authentic, rather than becoming preoccupied with academic constraints. Famous artists who emerged from these workshops, such as Twins Seven Seven, Muraina Oyelami, and Rufus Ogundele, were, like Beier, never academically trained. Beier also participated in the theater company of the Mbari Mbayo Club, painting backdrops and designing costumes for plays and religious ceremonies. Beier relocated with her husband to several different countries, including Papua New Guinea, Australia, India, and Germany. Despite these relocations, she continued to run workshops with local artists and maintained her own artistic practice, producing many works including paintings, sculptures, textiles, lithographs, furniture design, murals, mosaics, and illustrations for publications by Ulli Beier.