Prince Twins Seven-Seven was born Taiwo Olaniyi Oyewale-Toyeje Oyelale Osuntoki in 1944 in Ijara, Nigeria. The sole survivor of seven successive sets of twins, he renamed himself "Twins Seven-Seven". As a member of a royal lineage of the Yoruba people he later took the title of prince. Seven-Seven was one of the original artists of the famed Oshogbo School , which arose in the newly independent Nigeria of the early 1960's.

He had worked as an itinerant singer and dancer before he walked into one of the Mbari Mbayo art workshops led by expatriates and Georgina and Ulli Beier in Oshogbo in 1964. He took to painting immediately, and became one of the stars of the Oshogbo workshops. While a modernist in style, he took as his primary subject the rich religious and historical tradition of his Yoruba people.

Twins had a dramatic flair, which served him well. Seven-Seven rapidly achieved international fame, with major exhibitions in Europe, Japan and Australia as well as the United States. This included exhibitions at the Pompidou Center and  the Musée de L'Homme in Paris, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Museum of African Art in Washington, the Houston Contemporary Art Museum, the Fowler Museum at UCLA in Los Angeles, the Field Museum in Chicago and the National Museum of Art in Lagos, Nigeria. His work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian Institution and the Philadelphia Museum of Art as well as many private collections.

He was a prominent artist as well as a bandleader, teacher, dancer, actor and spokesman for Yoruba culture. His artistic works reflect a personal cosmology, drawn from Yoruba myths and stories. The images themselves are wonderfully complex; forms collide with colors to reveal a myth poetic world that demonstrates his unique imaginative power.

Twins Seven-Seven's autobiography “A dreaming life” was published in 1999. Twins Seven-Seven chose to live in the Philadelphia area for much of the last fifteen years of his life. One of Twins Seven-Seven’s paintings was featured in the Philadelphia Museum of Art show, African Art, African Voices.

UNESCO had named Twins Seven-Seven to Artist for Peace for 2005.

By Milica Matic