Provenance
Provenance Acquired from Primo Marella Gallery, Milan, Italy. Born in Dire in 1953, Abdoulaye Konaté studied painting at the Institut National des Arts in Bamako from 1972 to 1976. Following his graduation, he moved to Havana in 1978 to study at the Instituto Superior des Arte. Konaté remained in Cuba for seven years, developing an intimate knowledge of the country’s artistic movements, in particular Art Brut and ‘outsider’ painters such as Wifredo Lam (1902- 1982). Born in Cuba and raised a Roman Catholic, Lam was of Afro-Caribbean descent. His works are a hybrid of West African Yoruba and European Christian influences. His fantastical surreal paintings inspired the young Konaté. Returning to Mali in 1985, Konaté began to move away from traditional easel painting and experiment with textile hangings. He referred to these installations as ‘wall sculptures’. Textiles and cloth are of central importance to Mali’s economic and cultural history. It was of the primary commodities to be traded with the West. Certain cloths also have a ritual function which invests them with spiritual meaning. Konaté’s wall sculptures reference the ancient hunting tunics of the Mandé. According to Malian tradition, these tunics were believed to protect the wearer from danger, having been adorned with amulets and charms called Gris-Gris. Konaté describes how his work has been informed by Mali’s cultural heritage: All my work is informed by my culture. I worked for 20 years with the National Museum of Mali and this helped me towards a deeper understanding of my cultural and linguistic heritage. I use this knowledge to develop that artistic and aesthetic elements of my work. The creative process begins with a simple pencil sketch. From this, the artist works with his studio to translate this into the full-scale textile, beginning at the floor and progressing horizontally. Konaté uses creates textual variety by employing applique and different cottonbased fabrics. These textile installations explore the artist’s sociopolitical and environmental concerns, drawing on themes such as migration, waste and globalised trade. Konaté has participated in numerous international exhibitions including Documenta 12 in 2007, and the Africa Remix international tour that travelled to the Centre Pompidou, Paris and the Hayward Gallery, London. Bibliography I. Hubner, W. Welling, J. Busca & R. L. Sozzi, Abdoulaye Konaté: The world in Textile exh. cat., (Berg en Dal ,2013). C. Spring, ‘Abdoulaye Konaté’ in Angaza Afrika African Art Now,, (London 2008) pp.164-167. Ben Enwonwu’s sixty-year career spans one of the most pivotal periods in Nigeria’s recent history, the transition from colony to independence. He is the most celebrated African artist of the twentieth century. Enwonwu was born a twin in Onitsha, eastern Nigeria, on 14 July 1917. The Enwonwu family was well-regarded by the community. His father, Odigwe Omenka, previously a technical assistant for the Royal Niger Company, had taken retirement seven years earlier when he was inducted into the prestigious Agbalanze Ozo society, and honour that invested him with ‘sacred’ status. An adept sculptor, he was often called upon to carve ritual objects for his fellow Ozo members. Some of Enwonwu’s earliest memories are of playing with the wood in his father’s workshop. Enwonwu’s mother, Iyom Nweze was also a significant personage in her own right, running a lucrative textile business. Inheriting his father’s artistic disposition, Enwonwu enrolled at Government College, Ibadan in 1934, where he studied under Kenneth C. Murray, a British education officer in the colonial civil service, and later Director of Antiquities. In 1937, Enwonwu was one of a handful of students selected by Murray to exhibit at the Zwemmer Gallery in London, and at the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow the following year. This exposure resulted in a scholarship to continue his studies in England, first at Goldsmith College, and subsequently at the Slade School of Art where he graduated with a distinction in sculpture in 1947. Even at this early stage in his career, Enwonwu was attracting international attention. In 1946, he was invited by the director general of UNESCO, Sir Julian Huxley, to participate in the International Exhibition of Modern Art at Musée National d’Art in Paris. Over the Ben Enwonwu: Pan-African Pioneer ‘Ben Enwonwu: a portrait of my father’ by Oliver Enwonwu ‘Photograph courtesy of the Ben Enwonwu Foundation’. Enwonwu’s ‘Africa Dances’ series was inspired by a travelogue of the same name written by an English anthropologist, Geoffrey Gorer, in 1935. The young artist was frustrated by the account, believing that it failed to articulate the significance of dance in African societies. He set about painting a body of work that would explore the dance and ritual performances of his Onitsha-Igbo society. The following paintings demonstrate that Enwonwu was less concerned with documenting specific dances or costumes than expressing the symbolic meaning of these ancient practices. His chief preoccupation was to communicate the fundamental importance of rhythm and spirit: What is rhythm? It is the being’s architecture, the inner dynamism that gives it form, the system of waves it emits towards others, the pure expression of vital force…it expresses itself through the most material means, the most sensual ones; line, surfaces, colours, volumes in architecture, sculpture and painting; stresses in poetry and music; movements in dancing… The rhythm arises here from frequent repetition at regular intervals of a particular line, colour, figure, geometrical form, but especially from the contrast of colours. Generally, on a dark background that makes a space or a ‘rest’ (as in music) the painter disposes figures in clear colours or vice versa. The outline and colouring of the figures correspond less to appearances of reality, than to the deep rhythm of objects. (Ben Enwonwu, quotation courtesy of the Ben Enwonwu Foundation) Africa Dances next ten years he held numerous solo exhibitions at the prestigious London galleries, Berkley Gallery and Gallerie Appolinaire (1947, 1948, 1950, 1952 and 1955). He also exhibited in the USA at the behest of the Harmon Foundation in 1950, 1952 and 1957. Enwonwu returned to Nigeria in 1948, having been appointed Art Supervisor of the Colonial Office by the government. The artist was committed to his role as cultural ambassador and actively engaged in public life. In 1955, he was awarded a Medal of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his contributions to art and culture. On the eve of Nigeria’s independence, he was commissioned to sculpt a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II to celebrate her visit in 1956. Enwonwu was invited to Buckingham Palace to make the preparatory sketches, which he then translated into bronze in his studio. In 1968, Enwonwu was asked to be the cultural advisor for the newly elected Nigerian government. Over the next decade, he received many accolades including an honorary doctorate from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, honorary citizenship and Officer of the National Order of the Republic of Senegal, and the Nigerian National Merit Award. On his death in 1994, the artist was mourned as a national icon. An obituary described him as the ‘leading light’ of Nigerian art, successfully synthetizing indigenous art traditions with Western conventions to create a modern national aesthetic. The following highlights demonstrate Enwonwu’s stylistic and technical versatility. Through these artworks, we will explore the artist’s principle themes: ‘Africa Dances’, ‘Negritude’, Portraiture, Masquerade, Landscape and Sculpture.
