Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu M.B.E (Nigerian, 1917-1994) Ututu (framed)
Provenance : Provenance Commissioned from the artist by the present owner's family in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1992; A private collect, Nigeria; Thence by direct descent to the present owner in 2020; A private collection. In Ututu, Enwonwu depicts a meeting of the Ozo, the highest spiritual, religious, and social group in the Igbo societies of southeastern Nigeria. Identifiable by their distinctive white robes and eagle-plumed red caps, the group plays a key role in the communal deliberations that underlie the order of Igbo societies. The socio-political practices of the Igbo community were of particular interest to Enwonwu in the years following the Nigerian Civil War. The Igbo people who had fought for their independence from Nigeria were now facing the challenge of reassimilating themselves within a united Nigeria. Sylvester Ogbechie recognises that, in this period, 'Enwonwu's use of indigenous symbolism served him well as he recast the thorny question of national reconciliation in metaphorical images' (Ogbechie, 2008: p. 178). Enwonwu consequently executed variations on the Ututu subject from the 1950s onwards. The large oil on board, Ututu: Morning Meeting of Chiefs at Old Asaba (1958), marks the first of these paintings. As in the present work a group of male figures are depicted in deep deliberation beneath great Iroko trees. Sylvester Ogbechie notes the significance of Enwonwu's decision to locate the tableaux in Asaba. He explains that Asaba, like Enwonwu's birthplace, Onitsha, is considered a marginal Igbo culture by Igbo peoples residing in eastern Nigeria. During the Biafran civil war, 'the two contending factions called the loyalty of Western Igbo communities into question, and they suffered immense casualties as a result' (Ogbechie, 2008: p. 178). Ogbechie deduces that 'Enwonwu's paean to the regal elders thus masked his anguish at the devastation wrought by the war and served to identify him with these individuals who shared a liminal Igbo ethnic and political identity (Ogbechie, 2008: p. 178). Undoubtedly underpinned by political sentiment, Ututu, which loosely translates from the Igbo as 'Morning', also captures the activities of daily life. A woman carrying a basket on her head is accompanied by a group of children who seem to bound through the air as they pass the group of men. The children perhaps serve as a symbol for the next generation of Igbo people destined to shape the future of postcolonial Nigeria. Painted in 1992, the year following the artist's landmark retrospective exhibition held at the Nigerian National Museum in Lagos, the present work demonstrates Enwonwu's propensity to reconfigure earlier themes in the final years of his artistic career. The significance of Ututu in Enwonwu's oeuvre is thus established both in terms of its political nature and its place within the lineage of his life-long artistic production. Bibliography Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2008).
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