Ben Enwonwu’s impact on post-colonial African Art was nothing short of revolutionary. His life and work were a bridge between traditional conceptions of African art, and contemporary interpretations of what it means to be an African artist within a global community.
It was an exclusive exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists in London in November of 1957 and a bushy-haired man from the Colony of Nigeria was showing Queen Elizabeth II around a larger-than-life bronze statue of her. This was an unusual sight in the 1950s: the young English queen and an African talking closely about a large piece of art—the queen herself cast in immutable bronze. What could have brought them together?
The journey to the event of the unveiling of that bronze sculpture began in 1956 when the queen visited Nigeria, then a British colony. On the request of the Nigerian government, she commissioned a sculpture from the leading African artist of the time, Ben Enwonwu. Before then, no African artist had ever received such a commission; it was seen as the final act of goodwill and solidarity between the queen and the people of Nigeria. Enwonwu, whose reputation had risen astronomically through the 1940s and 1950s, built on a novel fusion of European and African artistic techniques, took to the task with seriousness. Here was a chance to express the thoughts and feelings of the Nigerian people on the most recognizable figure of British imperialism...
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