El Anatsui

Artist Alliance Gallery, Accra

Private Collection

Sotheby’s London, Modern and Contemporary African Art, 16 October 2018, Lot 45

Acquired from the above sale by the present owner

Works such as the present lot have undoubtedly paved the way for Nigeria-based Ghanaian artist, El Anatsui. Although this brilliant artist is most widely recognised for his glittering bottle cap tapestries, El Anatsui’s wooden sculptures remain at the heart of his practice and are considered the hallmark of his early career and precursors to the metal installations that made him famous on an international scale.

Such works are heavy with significance; the different colours of the chosen slabs of wood recall the diversity of the continent, while the power tools used represent the violence that African people have endured, symbolism further enhanced by the blow torch or acetylene torch used to literally scorch the surface of the piece. The composition is completed by saturated fields of acrylic paint in the upper left, interrupting the otherwise natural tones and blurring the lines between painting and sculpture, a recurrent theme in Anatsui’s oeuvre. As art historian Ola Oloidi observed, “These assorted wood forms have also brought natural coloration, in addition to artificial ones, that make many of the works acquire painting characteristics. One is also therefore able to acknowledge that in Anatsui’s sculptures, there is either sculpture in painting, painting in sculpture, painting of sculpture or sculpture of painting.”

Anatsui’s wooden pieces are particularly notable as a foundation for his concept of nonfixed form, which is found across his practice. Anatsui explains the origins of this idea: “When I thought more and experimented, I got into the idea of using single strips of wood to work on and then bringing them together into a unit - a unit which is capable of rearranging itself or being rearranged. So, the idea of the nonfixed artwork actually started from there and has continued into the metal works.”

Bibliography:

Susan Mullin Vogel, El Anatsui: Art and Life, Munich, New York, and London, 2012