Footnotes

Provenance
The estate of the artist, UK;
Bonhams Sale, London, May 2015, Africa Now - Modern Africa, Lot 38;
A private collection.

Literature
O. Oguibe, Uzo Egonu: An African Artist in the West, (Kala, London: 1995), p. 133. (illustrated).

Unique among Nigerian artists for having spent nearly all of his career in Europe, mostly London, Uzo Egonu has remained a potent creative figure in his native Nigeria. A member of the 'Commonwealth generation' who achieved success in Britain in the 1950s and 60s, Egonu was one of the few artists to remain in the UK despite facing increasing racial discrimination in the 1970s. Most moved to the new metropolis of modern art, New York, whilst others returned home when many African nations were achieving independence. This exodus of artists from the Commonwealth also coincided with British interest shifting away from its old colonial relationships, to the European and US markets.

Egonu had exhibited at the Woodstock Gallery along with celebrated Jamaican artist Ronald Moody (1900- 84) during this period of recognition during the 50s and 60s, which came with the introduction of the Commonwealth Institute. The institute played a key role in shaping the creative output of the newly titled 'Commonwealth of Independent Nations', with aims of 'educational, cultural and economic exchange' with the diaspora. As such, many independent institutions supported this goal, and many artists from the Commonwealth - Egonu among them - came to study in London.

Regarded as both a painter and printmaker, Egonu studied painting and typography at Camberwell between 1949 and 1956. This European graphic education is noticeable in what Offoedu-Okeke refers to as the 'peculiar European characters - strong lineal infusion, specific urban tropes, and industrial textures' that Egonu employs in both his serigraphs and oil paintings. In this example, Egonu has eschewed three dimensions to instead articulate the Poetess in decisively articulated line and block colour. These stylistic traits he first experimented with in his series of colour screen-prints from the late 1970s and early 80s.

Throughout his life in Britain Egonu remained particularly dedicated to the cause of Biafra's refugees during the Nigerian civil war (1967- 1970) and its aftermath. The present work was completed subsequent to this traumatic period of Nigerian history in 1981, as part of the 'Stateless people' series. However Nigeria was still in a state of flux, with the rapid rise and fall of the Second Republic under Shagari between 1979 and 1983. Allegations of corruption within politics and the oil industry led the military to overthrow Shagari in 1983. By this time, Egonu had lived in England for 35 years, and was suffering from a condition that caused him partial blindness. Even with this disability, Egonu's fervour for the continued grief of his birthplace and its people is evident. At the opening of the 'Uzo Egonu now 1986' exhibition of the 'Stateless' series at the Royal Festival Hall, Egonu implored his audience:

"It is always assumed that 'Stateless people' are people who, through the consequence of their political activates... or who suffer victimisation due to their religious conviction in their original countries, either escaped or were forced out by their authoritarian regime...My stateless people are far from being political or religious refugees. They are people who are symbolically stateless... In this modern age it is not good enough for a country to feel that because it is not a colony of another power this fact in itself is commendable. What is commendable is what a country is trying to achieve and what is had accomplished". (Oguibe, p. 126)

Egonu evidently was able to carve out a creative identity for himself in London, whilst maintaining his interest in Nigeria's current events. In his conversation with Carol Becker in 2002, Okwui Enwezor spoke about how European institutions appear to have erased the 'post-colonial', seeming to spring from the 'colonial' (pre-independence), straight to the 'neo-colonial'. It is this 'post-colonial' position from where many of Africa's forgotten Modernists informed their work, Egonu primarily among them. This work is an eloquent example of Egonu's unique modern internationalism, it does not position the West and Africa as separate entities, instead his 'synthesis' of post-colonial politics and a European graphic style allows for the 'emerging possibility of an African presence in an International world'.

Bibliography
C. Becker, 'A Conversation with Okwui Enwezor' , Art Journal, Vol. 61 No. 2, (Summer 2002), pp. 8 -27.
J. Fisher, 'The Other Story and the Past Imperfect', Tate Papers, Issue 12 (Autumn, 2009) pp. 1- 10.
O. Offoedu-Okeke, 'Uzo Egonu', Artists of Nigeria, (Milan, 2012), pp. 82- 88.
O. Oguibe, Uzo Egonu: An African Artist in the West, (Kala, London, 1995), pp. 119- 146.