Ben Enwonwu

New York, Bonhams, Modern & Contemporary African Art, 2 May 2019, lot 28

Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

''My aim was to symbolise our rising nation. I have tried to combine material, crafts, and traditions, to express a conception that is based on womanhood – woman, the mother and nourisher of man. In our rising nation, I see the forces embodied in womanhood; the beginning, and then, the development and flowering into the fullest stature of a nation – a people! This sculpture is spiritual in conception, rhythmical in movement, and three dimensional in its architectural setting – these qualities are characteristic of the sculpture of my ancestors.'' (The Artist, 1957)

Anyanwu is one of Ben Enwonwu's most recognisable and most-revered subjects, the original sculpture was commissioned in 1954 for the new National Museum in Lagos. In 1966, due to the success of the original sculpture, another large-scale version was gifted to the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, where it remains today. Enwonwu then went a step further and began to create smaller versions, such as the present lot, for domestic display. The majority of the smaller scale works date to the 1970s or later; they were cast both in bronze and resin from two different moulds and appear in several major public and private collections. Variations can be found in the patina of the bronze, the details in the arms and length of the well-known "chicken beak" coiffure. One 1979-81 example can be found in The Royal Collection and was presented to Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh by the President of Nigeria, Shehu Shagari, during his State Visit to the UK, 17-20 March 1981 (ref. RCIN 2175, titled The Rising Sun).

Stylistically, Anyanwu can be seen as the culmination of Enwonwu’s training up to this point and various cultural influences, and marks the beginning of the artist’s mature style. The title Anyanwu refers to the traditional Igbo practice of saluting the rising sun in honour of the ChiUkwu, the Great Spirit. The female figure Enwonwu depicts rising up out of the ground is the powerful Igbo earth goddess Ani, symbolising the aspirations of the soon-to-be independent nation.

His depiction of the goddess, with her elongated body and stylised head, demonstrates his appreciation for Igbo artistic traditions, drawing on his very earliest artistic influence, his father’s wood carvings for the shrines at Onitsha. The head is derived from a 16^th century Benin bronze sculpture of the head of an Edo Queen Mother: Enwonwu’s exploration of Benin art and culture stemmed from his apprenticeship with the Benin royal guild of sculptors in 1943. His interpretation of Igbo feminine power draws from the Black Mother symbolism found in Léopold Sédar Senghor’s Négritude philosophy, in which he immersed himself in 1940s London and Paris.

Bibliography:

Sylvester O. Ogbechie, Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist, Rochester, 2008

Chika Okeke-Agulu, ‘On Ben Enwonwu's "Any