Art, Design & Fashion
Landmark
Ben Enwonwu
1917 – 1994
The father of Nigerian modernism, who sculpted Elizabeth II
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Nigeria Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
He combined a Western training with Igbo sculptural tradition and became the most celebrated African artist of his century — and sculpted Elizabeth II from life.
Odinigwe Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu was born at Onitsha, the son of a traditional Igbo sculptor, and learned carving at home before winning a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art in London.
That combination is the whole point of his work. He was trained in the European academy and refused to be an ethnographic curiosity within it, insisting that African art was not raw material for European modernism but a tradition with its own authority — an argument he made in print as well as in bronze, and made against Picasso's admirers as much as against colonial officials.
In 1956 he was commissioned to sculpt Queen Elizabeth II, who sat for him in person: an African artist modelling the British monarch from life, four years before Nigerian independence. Anyanwu, his bronze figure of a woman rising toward the sun, stands at the National Museum in Lagos and outside the United Nations building in New York.
His Tutu, a portrait of an Ife princess painted in 1974 and known across Nigeria from reproductions, disappeared for decades and was found in a London flat in 2018; it sold at Bonhams for over a million pounds. He was the first African artist to achieve that international standing, and the generation that followed him worked in a space he had forced open.
That combination is the whole point of his work. He was trained in the European academy and refused to be an ethnographic curiosity within it, insisting that African art was not raw material for European modernism but a tradition with its own authority — an argument he made in print as well as in bronze, and made against Picasso's admirers as much as against colonial officials.
In 1956 he was commissioned to sculpt Queen Elizabeth II, who sat for him in person: an African artist modelling the British monarch from life, four years before Nigerian independence. Anyanwu, his bronze figure of a woman rising toward the sun, stands at the National Museum in Lagos and outside the United Nations building in New York.
His Tutu, a portrait of an Ife princess painted in 1974 and known across Nigeria from reproductions, disappeared for decades and was found in a London flat in 2018; it sold at Bonhams for over a million pounds. He was the first African artist to achieve that international standing, and the generation that followed him worked in a space he had forced open.
Spotted something wrong? Tell us and we will check it.