Footnotes

Provenance
A private collection.

Recalling his formal training at the Slade of Fine Art (which was temporarily relocated to Ruskin College, Oxford), Ben Enwonwu produced a number of pencil drawings of female nudes in 1945. The present work displays the development of Enwonwu's signature modern style.

"Oxford was growing on me... my mind was open to learning all I could, but I was quite determined to sift away all the influences and use what was beneficial to me." (Harmon Foundation Interview Transcripts, 12 August 1950: Folder 87: Ben Enwonwu.)

Highly talented in artistic creation across a broad scope of mediums, some of Enwonwu's most globally renowned works have taken the form of sculpture, particularly his Anyanwu series and his depiction of Portrait of Queen Elizabeth II (1957). Of Anyanwu, Enwonwu said:

"My aim was to symbolize 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." (Enwonwu quoted in S. Ogbechie, p. 129-130.)

Enwonwu's knowledge of wood is greatly displayed in the present work. The significance of the textural quality the wood gives is central to Enwonwu's selective process. Infused with an expressive broadness and boldness, the present work displays Enwonwu's consistency in his preference for the thematic use of the female form. Furthermore, the present lot is indicative of the artist's experimentation with elongating features of the human body in line with his Negritude series, an ethos that was central to the artist's practice.

Bibliography
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008).