Beschreibung:

Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu M.B.E (Nigerian, 1917-1994)Bust of a young boy
bronze on wooden plinth
33 x 18 x 19cm (13 x 7 1/16 x 7 1/2in). (including base)FootnotesProvenance
A private collection.
The qualities of the present lot show the refined rendering and the textual qualities that the artist had also favoured in his wood sculptures. It could be said that Ben Enwonwu's earliest artistic depictions were in sculpture given that he used to carve his own toys as a child. In his later bronze works, often depicting people of personal significance to Enwonwu, sculptural portraiture was an practise of the artist that displays an extension of his extensive artistic talents. So skilful was his technique that in 1956 he received a portrait commission of Queen Elizabeth II to commemorate her visit to Nigeria earlier that year. Working in London, he conducted preliminary sketches and clay models of the monarch in his own studio before relocating to the Maida Vale studio of his colleague at the Royal Society of British Artists, Sir William Reid-Dick, as the work increased in scale. In an interview conducted with the artist in 1988, Sylvester Ogbechie relates, 'Enwonwu completed his clay model of the Queen's portrait in July 1957 and had it cast in bronze by Guilio Galicie, an Italian bronze caster resident in London, from a plaster cast prepared in the studio of Frederico Mancini' (Ogbechie, 2008: p. 138).
Bibliography
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (Rochester, NY: 2008)