Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu M.B.E

(Nigerian, 1917-1994)

Portrait of a Girl (framed)

Footnotes

Informed by the Negritude ideology, Portrait of a Girl, from subject matter to painterly execution, exemplifies the artist's hope for the future of his culture. This was to transcend from any colonial interruption within his contemporary practice in order to exemplify modern life while being aware of his traditional roots. This movement sought to diminish colonial interjection within the art that black Nigerian artists were creating, reclaiming a sense of pride in Nigerian artist's cultural history, such as Enwonwu. Leopold Senghor had spearheaded this movement with the strong belief that it was imperative for black culture to recover the cultural pride that colonialism had attempted to stamp out. By emphasising the heritage of back intellectual's and calling for an acknowledgment or incorporation into their work, whether that be in literacy or artistic practise.

Following his formal artistic training in Europe, attending the Slade School of Fine Art in 1945, some of the artists early works employed the traditional Western techniques of portrait painting. While it could be said that this work possesses elements of this formal training and European modernism, the Negritude ideology and aesthetic is also firmly present within the work. In the faded background figures, and the removal of detailed eyes, presenting the subject with a level of anonymity, the current work grants the viewer with a rhetoric of the Negritude ideology.

This later work steps away from any rigidity that had characterised some of his earlier works that were more directly informed by Western portraiture techniques, framing the girl in the foreground of a background of movement. Towards the end of his life, Enwonwu turned to informal and quickly completed works, perhaps drawing inspiration from more domesticated scenes. The present work could have been a child of his family members or house staff's children due to their domestically informal attire. Painted two years before the artists death, the present work gives a sense of the artist's hopes for the future and a stamp of his identity he has carved out in art history.

Bibliography
A Celebration of Excellence: Ben Enwonwu 1921 - 1994, (The Ben Enwonwu Foundation, 2004)