Newly Unearthed Artworks Highlight the Nigerian Sculptor Behind the Queen’s Legacy

Three decades after his death, Ben Enwonwu, the Nigerian painter and sculptor, continues to be regarded as one of Africa’s leading artists.

His paintings and sculptures grace galleries and public venues worldwide, but two recently discovered pieces in the UK were surprisingly overlooked—one even serving as a doorstop. This unexpected finding has sparked renewed interest in Enwonwu’s life and artistic legacy.

During a guest appraisal on the BBC TV series Antiques Roadshow, an unrecognized item turned out to be a valuable sculpture by Enwonwu, acquired for just £50 ($60) at a car boot sale. Its current valuation is around £15,000.

The stone sculpture bears a plaque reading “Ben Enwonwu–Igbo Sculpture” and is signed by the Zwemmer Gallery, a now-defunct London art venue. This signature was essential in verifying the sculpture’s authenticity, believed to be crafted during the zenith of Enwonwu’s career in the 1970s.

In a fascinating twist, just days prior to this discovery, a previously unknown Enwonwu watercolor poster from 1942, titled Yams, was found in the UK’s National Archives. The artwork depicts the transport of yams along a river and was commissioned by the Ministry of Information during World War II to promote agricultural production and self-reliance in West Africa.

This poster has been authenticated by both the director of modern and contemporary African art at Bonhams, a leading auction house, and by Enwonwu’s biographer, both of whom were unaware of its existence until now.

This is not the first unexpected discovery of Enwonwu’s work; in 2017, his painting Tutu, lost since 1975, was found in a London attic and later sold at Bonhams for £1.2 million, significantly exceeding its estimated value of £300,000.

A distinguished career

Nonetheless, the journey of the artist often hailed as “the most influential African artist of the 20th century” by The Guardian, was not without its challenges. Born in Onitsha, Nigeria, in 1917 during colonial rule, Enwonwu was the child of a cloth merchant mother and an engineer/sculptor father. After his father’s passing, he took up carving in the traditional Igbo style.

Enwonwu studied fine art in Nigeria, and his first solo exhibition in Lagos in 1944 earned him a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he graduated with top honors. He later taught at various Nigerian schools and became the art adviser to the Nigerian government in 1948, significantly elevating his reputation throughout the late 1940s and 1950s.

In 1955, he was commissioned by the Nigerian National Museum to create Anyanwu, a bronze statue symbolizing the Igbo goddess Ani, to celebrate Nigeria’s independence. This statue is still on display outside the museum today.

In 1957, Enwonwu captured international attention with a life-sized bronze sculpture of Queen Elizabeth II, commissioned during her visit to Nigeria the previous year, making him the first African artist to create an official portrait of a European monarch. The Queen posed for him in London, and the statue was unveiled later that year. Sylvester Ogbechie, Enwonwu’s biographer, remarked in his 2008 book, Ben Ewonwu: The Making of an African Modernist, that the statue blended the Queen’s distinctive traits with the serene expression characteristic of Enwonwu’s Head of a Yoruba Girl sculpture.

Oliver Enwonwu, the artist’s son, noted in a 2022 interview with CNN that his father opted to depict the Queen with fuller lips.

“Many positive critiques emphasized that the artist presented the Queen through his African lens—resulting in a piece enriched with African attributes, typical of his artistic style,” he mentioned.

After this, Queen Elizabeth II commissioned Enwonwu to create a bust of her eldest son, then-Prince Charles, now King Charles III.

Ben Enwonwu, Master of the British Empire

However, Enwonwu’s associations with the British crown drew criticism from those viewing it as a betrayal of Nigerian nationalism. For his sculpture of the Queen, he was awarded an MBE (Member of the British Empire) at a time when Nigeria was on the brink of independence.

In a 1998 essay for African Studies Quarterly, Professor Nkiru Nzegwu criticized Enwonwu for “seeking validation from colonial masters” through his art. Nevertheless, he was a passionate supporter of Nigerian independence, delivering a speech in Paris in 1956 in which he declared:

“I know that when a country is suppressed by another politically, the native traditions of the art of the suppressed begin to die out. Then the artists also begin to lose the values of their own artistic idiom. Art, under this circumstance, is doomed.”

As both an artist and an individual, Enwonwu navigated a complex identity, striving to marry his accomplishments within the British art community with his African roots, especially after facing racism during his time in London. He understood the challenge of integrating modernist art techniques while rejecting the colonial attitudes that dismissed African art as primitive while praising Western progress.

In a BBC interview in 1958, he asserted: “I will not accept an inferior position in the art world. Nor has my art been labeled ‘African’ because I have not accurately expressed my reality.”

Throughout his career, Enwonwu championed black art and artists, producing series of paintings and sculptures that celebrated Africa and black culture, including his Africa Dances series from the 1960s.

A gallery worker stands beside The Court of the Oba of Benin by Ben Enwonwu at Sotheby’s in London in 2020. (Photo by Tolga Akmen / AFP)

An image of reconciliation

Following the devastating Biafran War, Enwonwu’s works profoundly honored Igbo culture. In 1971, he created Christine, a portrait of an American hairstylist residing in Lagos with her British husband, which sold for £1.1 million in 2019. His best-known work, Tutu, crafted in 1973, has become a symbol of reconciliation between the government and Biafran separatists. Often referred to as the African Mona Lisa, it features Ifẹ princess Adetutu Ademiluyi in three portraits, all of which had been missing since 1975; the second version was rediscovered in 2017. In an interview with The Guardian, Nigerian-British novelist Ben Okri described this finding as “the most significant discovery in contemporary African art in over 50 years.”

Enwonwu passed away in 1994 at the age of 76, leaving behind a legacy of bridging the African and Western art worlds. By merging European artistic genres with African and Igbo traditions, his work confronted Western stereotypes about African art, showcasing the identity of post-colonial Nigeria on a global platform.

His masterpieces continue to grace esteemed venues worldwide – as shown above, Enwonwu’s Anyanwu was seen by then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Enwonwu is heralded as the defining figure of modernist art in Africa, inspiring countless artists, including Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare. In a 2021 interview with New Internationalist, Shonibare acknowledged that his appreciation for Enwonwu’s sculptures was among his earliest experiences with art and cultural heritage. The legacy of Enwonwu lives on, embodying the transformative power of art in transcending boundaries and shaping identity in an ever-evolving world.

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