Overview
Ben Enwonwu was a sculptor and painter, and the first Nigerian artist to gain wide international recognition. He was Igbo, born at Onitsha in what is now Anambra State.
Biography
Enwonwu's father was a traditional sculptor, and he trained first in that workshop and then in colonial schools before studying at the Slade School of Fine Art in London and at Oxford. He worked in bronze, wood and paint, and taught and held government art advisory posts in Nigeria.
His public commissions include the bronze Anyanwu, versions of which stand at the National Museum in Lagos and at the United Nations building in New York, and Sango for the national electricity authority. He was commissioned to sculpt Queen Elizabeth II from life in 1956, an unusual commission for an African artist at that time. His Tutu portraits, painted in the 1970s of an Ife princess, became widely reproduced, and one was rediscovered and sold at auction in London in 2018 for a record price for modern Nigerian art. He wrote and lectured on the place of African form in modern art and resisted having his work read only as ethnographic material.
Notable achievements
- Sculpted Anyanwu, versions of which stand in Lagos and at the United Nations in New York
- Commissioned to sculpt Queen Elizabeth II from life in 1956
- Painted the Tutu portraits, one of which set an auction record for modern Nigerian art in 2018
- Held teaching and government art advisory posts in Nigeria
Legacy
Enwonwu is treated as the founding figure of Nigerian modernism, both for the work itself and for insisting that African artists be judged within modern art rather than as craft producers.