Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu

(Nigerian, 1921-1996)

Dancers

Footnotes

Provenance
Acquired by Ambassador Elbert G. Mathews in Nigeria in the mid-1960s;
A US collection.

Clara Etso Ugbodaga-Ngu (1921-1996) is an iconic figure in Nigerian art history. An influential artist and educator, she played a substantial role in the structural advancement of the postcolonial modernist art scene that emerged around the country's independence in 1960. Born in Kano, Ugbodaga-Ngu taught art in mission schools in the North before receiving a scholarship from the colonial administration to study art at the Chelsea School of Art and train as a teacher at the London Institute of Education. On her return to Nigeria, she began work as an art teacher with the Nigerian College of Arts, Science and Technology, Zaria (NCAST) becoming the first Nigerian - and furthermore, the first female - teacher in the department. This appointment was hugely significant as it placed an African woman in one of the key art institutions of the time.

Ugbodaga-Ngu taught the students who went on to form the Zaria Art Society. Popularly described as the 'Zaria rebels', this group of artists played an integral part in the development of the Nigerian art canon, rejecting European modes of art production to develop a unique hybrid art-making practice. Describing her as a 'doyen of the artists, a painter and sculptor', Nigeria Magazine stated that 'she taught most of the leading Nigerian contemporary artists' and Ugbodaga-Ngu herself remarked that the 'majority of the young men who were my students are Nigeria's main source of manpower in institutions of higher learning, museums, industries and the private sector' (N. Akande, 2019). Ugbodaga-Ngu therefore made a vital contribution to the development of the Nigerian art canon as her students went on to play founding roles in nurturing later generations of artists, setting up art schools and influencing the shape of Nigerian art into the present day.

Ugbodaga-Ngu was defiant of the one-point perspective or formal representational style adopted by early modernist artists working in Nigeria such as Aina Onabolu (1881-1963). Moving away from a figurative style, she produced completely abstract work early in her career, blending Western and Nigerian traditions, forms, techniques, and ideas to create fresh modernist work. To adopt the language of Modernism was a rebellious act because 'any claim from an African to be a modern artist in [the eyes of the West was] unthinkable and impudent' (E. Nicodemus, 1993: p. 32). The portrayal of local concerns and everyday life made her work distinct in a period where Nigerian modern artists were often preoccupied with producing imagery of 'woman' as the symbol of postcolonial rebirth or presenting versions of a romanticised precolonial past.

In 1958, Ugbodaga-Ngu held a solo exhibition at the Commonwealth Institute Art Gallery, London — the first art exhibition by a Nigerian female artist in the UK —followed by an exhibition in Boston, USA (1963). Her work was featured in group shows such as Independence Exhibition (1960), Lagos; Contemporary Nigerian Art (1968), London; and FESTAC '77 (1977), Lagos, where she was one of only seven women among the sixty-three participating artists. Although Ugbodaga-Ngu and her contemporary female artists have been obscured by the colonial, patriarchal biases of art history, recent academic exploration into globalised historical perspectives has prompted scholars to revisit her oeuvre, to highlight, complicate and destabilise orthodox understandings of female Nigerian artists and their contributions to Modernism. For example, her oil painting Abstract (1960) was recently shown as part of Museum global. Microhistories of an Ex-centric Modernism at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, Germany — a project which problematised the centring of Modernism on the Western art canon.

Dancers is an exceptional example of Ugbodaga-Ngu's interest in blending Nigerian motifs and subject matter with a semi-abstract style. The painting portrays two dancers within a complex architectural composition, the figures integrated into angular, tapering shapes whose sharp edges, flattened surfaces and geometric elements burst with movement. The rich, vibrant colour palette presents individuals with strength, confidence and purpose: the characters are dancing, engaged in the moment and not performing for the viewer. Ugbodaga-Ngu's recognisable geometric diamond shaping and open contouring of the human form is evident in this painting, which indicates the development of her style from earlier works such as Market Women (1961). These works sit alongside Beggars (1963) or Man and Bird (1963) as fascinating portrayals of the social, cultural and political history of Nigerian people in the moment following Nigerian independence.

Dancers was acquired by Elbert G. Mathews in the mid-1960s while he was serving as the United States Ambassador to Nigeria. Appointed to the position by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, Mathews remained in the diplomatic role until 1969.

We are grateful to Stacey Kennedy for the compilation of the above footnote.

Bibliography
N. Akande, Uncovered Female Nigerian Artists, exh. cat., FEAAN (London, 2019)

E. Nicodemus, 'Meeting Carl Einstein', Third text: Third World perspectives on contemporary art and culture, 23 (1993): 31-38

Nigeria Magazine, vol 96 (1968).