Art Fact Friday #29 El Anatsui
- William Mandela Matthews
- Feb 9, 2024
- 2 min read
A Ghanaian sculptor with an achievement-packed career living and working in Nigeria. The artist is highly recognized in African History and a leader in contemporary art. Using discarded items such as liquor bottle caps, cassava graters and newspaper printing plates the artist creates works that cannot be classified. The artists examine the legacy of colonialism and its influence on consumption, waste, and the environment. With works in prestigious art collections around the world, including the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; The Museum of Modern Art, NY; National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; The British Museum; the Vatican Museum.
Born February 4, 1944 in Anyako, Ghana, El Anatsui received art training at the College of Art, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1968, and a postgraduate diploma in art education 1969.
In 1975 he began teaching in the Fine Arts Department, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Anatssui was a Professor of Sculpture there for over four decades. At the University Anatsui started to include southeastern Nigeria’s traditional art practices into his work alongside native Ghanaian messages, themes, and symbolism. He worked with fragmentation in residency at the Cummington Community of the Arts in Massachusetts, 1980.
During the 1990s Anatsui was not widely recognized outside Africa although he did have international exhibitions like the 1990 Venice Biennale. Anatssui used layered lumber to create freestanding sculptures like Erosion, 1992. In 1998 he began using screw-top caps from alcohol bottles to create enormous, colorful, and glittering cloth like sculpture.
His process is often compared to kente cloth, in works like Man’s Cloth/Woman’s Cloth at the October Gallery, London later acquired by the British Museum, 2002. Sasa (Manteau) was purchased by the Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2004, and the first selected in exhibit “Africa Remix: Contemporary Art of a Continent.” Leading to 2007 the de Young Museum, San Francisco, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, had acquired Anatsui’s work. Anatsui was recognized internationally in 2007, his monumental sculptures, Dusasa I, Dusasa II, and Fresh and Fading Memories, were accepted into the Venice Biennale.
In 2011 he retired from teaching but stayed in Nsukka, opening a studio and work spaces in Enugu, Nigeria, and Tema, Ghana. He and his assistants created In Red Block 2010 and installations such as Gli 2010. His works were shown in “Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui” at the Akron Art Museum, Ohio, later traveling the United States, 2012.
Anatsui has draped the exteriors of such buildings as the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin Ozone Layer 2010, the Royal Academy of Arts, London TSIATSIA-Searching for Connection 2013, and El-Badi Palace Qaṣr al-Badīʿ, Marrakech, Morocco Kindred Viewpoints 2016. He was awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, 2015 at the Venice Biennale and the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association 2017.
His retrospective “Triumphant Scale” 2019 opened at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, breaking attendance records. In 2023 Tate Modern, London, requested an installation for the annual Turbine Hall commission. Currently he runs a studio in Nsukka, Enugu, Nigeria, and Tema, Ghana.
Hashtags:
#visualart #art #contemporaryart #artist #artwork #photography #abstractart #design #illustration #artoftheday #drawing #instilation #fineart #creative #artgallery #visualartist #modernart #abstract
References:
Comments