Footnotes

Provenance
A private collection Nigeria;
Sotheby's sale, London, 9th October 2020, lot 25;
A private collection.


Exhibited
London, Mall Galleries, Royal Society of British Artists, October 1985, one of cat. nos. 51-59, titled Africa Dances (probably another cast)
Lagos, Residence of the British High Commissioner, Salon Exhibition of paintings and sculptures from 1985 London Exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists, (October 1987), cat. no. 98 or 99, titled 'Dance Figure' (probably another cast)

The present work is an exceptional example of several of Ben Enwonwu's most primary themes in one focussed work: The elongated female form, dance, and Negritude. This bronze sculpture embodies the sinuous silhouette of Negritude, with the female figure's torso arched in an s-curve with her gaze towards the sky, her arms bent in motion above her head in a prayer position. This stature is one that we see recurring throughout the Africa Dances corpus.

"Many of my paintings are of dancing women, I see them in the trees. I call this the humanized form of symbolic art...I elongate because of the feelings I have as a Nigerian, for the Nigerians are aspiring to grow, in politics, in trade, in art, in every aspect of life." (Ben Enwonwu)

Typically cast in Resin, Africa Dances is a rare example of this form in bronze. Enwonwu's ability to refine such a stagnant material into a work so rhythmic and full of movement is evidenced clearly in the present work. Enwonwu himself commented on the freedom he felt in the practise:

"I am essentially a sculptor, and it is in this art that I feel I can talk to any artist, no matter what race or colour."

"I can carve with greater joy when I am interpreting in wood or stone my idea of human form and anatomy as can be imaged in forms of such media as stone or wood. This is one of the reasons I like the elongated sculptures." (Ben Enwonwu, quotation courtesy of the Ben Enwonwu Foundation)

In the years following Nigeria's independence from Great Britain, Enwonwu was tasked by the new Federal Government to advise on art education and cultural matters. A supporter of Pan-Africanism and Negritude ideology originally formulated by Léopold Sédar Senghor, Enwonwu espoused the need for Nigerian art to cease its adherence to colonial models. Enwonwu strove to promote embrace a new aesthetic that reflected the aspirations of Nigerians and the unique social and political conditions of Nigerian culture.

"(Enwonwu's) appropriation of Yoruba concepts of supernatural force and the classical human form as a vessel for expressing modern technology aspired to an inclusive national aesthetic."

The work is characteristic of Enwonwu's late style, and demonstrates his move towards abstraction.