BEN ENWONWU | ABSTRACT FIGURES (AFRICA DANCES)

Private Collection, UK, 2004

Acquired from the above by Michael Graham-Stewart and Michael Stevenson

Acquired from the above by the present owner

Michael Stevenson, Michael Graham-Stewart & Johans Borman, Take Your Road and Travel Along: The Advent of the Modern Black Painter in Africa, 2008, p. 75, illustrated in colour

“The image depicts male and female dancers and it is executed with hints of indigenous Igbo ideographic imagery on the skirt of the female figure in the foreground (the yellow semi-circular shapes stacked vertically on the left edge of the white skirt recall Uli signs). The bold red colours indicate that this painting also echoes funerary dances from Benin culture. This particular shade of red (called “blood red” in Benin) is the precise colour of coral beads of the sort that the Edo (Benin) king and his senior chiefs wear for ritual ceremonies”

(Sylvester O. Ogbechie, as quoted in Stevenson et al. 2008)