Ben Enwonwu

Private Collection, Nigeria

Thence by direct descent

Born in 1917 in Onitsha, Nigeria, Ben Enwonwu studied in Nigeria before receiving a scholarship to pursue further studies in the UK at Goldsmiths College and the Slade School of Fine Arts in 1944. Enwonwu garnered enormous acclaim during his career, receiving an MBE from Queen Elizabeth II in 1955 for his artistic contributions. Notably, he became the first African artist commissioned to create a sculpture of Queen Elizabeth II. In 1980, Enwonwu was honoured with the National Order of Merit by the Nigerian government for his profound impact on the nation’s arts and culture.

Enwonwu’s Africa Dances series, which takes its title from Geoffrey Gorer's 1935 book of the same name, comprises his most coveted and conceptually dense works. The present lot depicts a group of silhouetted female figures in a collective state of reverie, a genre scene that amounts to an allegorical representation of a harmonious and culturally rich postcolonial Nigeria, as well as an implicit reference to specific cultural practices, whether they be overt acts of celebration or long-established tradition of implicit protest masked through song and dance.

The present lot exhibits many of the compositional idiosyncrasies that distinguished Enwonwu’s Africa Dances series from his oeuvre. Importantly, this work contains unique details which offer the viewer new insights into Enwonwu’s approach to modelling his compositions. Enwonwu’s command of Western artistic techniques such as contrapposto is evidenced in detail from the poise and weight of the central female figures. Yet, their bodily forms, delicately carved from the grey brushstrokes which make up the background of the work, reflect an intention to imbue the composition with stylistic allusions to precolonial artforms. The result is a picture that emphasises a sense of dynamism and movement whilst maintaining a supreme compositional balance.

The present lot characterises the stylistic innovation which has distinguished Enwonwu as a towering figure in the pantheon of African Art History. In his consolidation of Western techniques with stylistic tenets of precolonial African visual culture, the artist reshaped the reception of African art in the Western academy and market during the mid-20th century. Enwonwu's oeuvre thus epitomises the postcolonial imperative to ameliorate the lacuna between indigenous traditional visual culture and an inherently Western artistic tradition.