Three decades after his death, the renowned Nigerian painter and sculptor Ben Enwonwu remains celebrated as Africa’s leading artist.

His impressive collection of artworks—comprising both paintings and sculptures—can be found in galleries and public spaces worldwide. Recently, two of his pieces were rediscovered in the UK, unexpectedly in plain sight—one even being used as a doorstop. This find has sparked renewed interest in both Enwonwu’s life and his artistic legacy.

During an appraisal segment on the BBC TV show Antiques Roadshow, a guest presented an unrecognized item, unaware that it was a valuable sculpture created by Ben Enwonwu. Bought several years earlier at a car boot sale for £50 ($60), the sculpture’s current valuation is approximately £15,000.

Inscribed at the base of the stone sculpture is a plaque stating “Ben Enwonwu–Igbo Sculpture,” accompanied by the signature of Zwemmer Gallery, a former art gallery in London. This signature was vital in establishing the sculpture’s credibility, believed to have been crafted in the 1970s during the height of Enwonwu’s career.

Just days prior to this finding, an unknown watercolor poster by Enwonwu from 1942 was discovered in the UK’s National Archives. Entitled Yams, it depicts the transportation of yams along a river and was commissioned by the UK’s Ministry of Information during World War II to encourage food production and self-sufficiency in West Africa.

This poster has been authenticated by the director of modern and contemporary African art at Bonhams, an international auction house, as well as by Enwonwu’s biographer, neither of whom had seen it before.

This isn’t the first lucky discovery of Enwonwu’s work. In 2017, his painting Tutu, missing since 1975, surfaced in the attic of a flat in London and was later sold at Bonhams for £1.2 million, significantly above its estimated worth of £300,000.

A distinguished career

However, the life of the artist, often hailed as “the most influential African artist of the 20th century” by The Guardian, was fraught with difficulties. Born in Onitsha, Nigeria, in 1917 during colonial rule, Enwonwu was the offspring of a cloth merchant mother and an engineer/sculptor father. Following his father’s passing, he inherited the tools and began creating in the traditional Igbo sculpture style.

Enwonwu studied fine art in Nigeria, and the success of his first solo exhibition in Lagos in 1944 earned him a scholarship to the Slade School of Fine Art in London, where he graduated with high honors. He subsequently taught at various Nigerian schools and was appointed art adviser to the Nigerian government in 1948. Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, his reputation grew exponentially.

In 1955, to honor Nigeria’s independence, Enwonwu was commissioned by the Nigerian National Museum to create Anyanwu, a bronze statue representing the Igbo goddess Ani, which still stands outside the museum today.

His breakout moment came in 1957 with an over life-sized bronze likeness of Queen Elizabeth II, commissioned during her visit to Nigeria the previous year. This made Enwonwu the first African artist to create an official portrait of a European monarch. The Queen posed for him in London, and the statue was unveiled later that year. Sylvester Ogbechie, Enwonwu’s biographer and visual artist, noted in his 2008 book, Ben Ewonwu: The Making of an African Modernist, that the statue combined the Queen’s distinguishing features with the serene expression characteristic of Enwonwu’s Head of a Yoruba Girl sculpture.

Oliver Enwonwu, the artist’s son, remarked during an interview with CNN in 2022 about his father’s decision to represent the Queen with fuller lips.

“Many of the positive critiques observed that the artist presented the Queen through his African viewpoint—resulting in a work rich with African traits, typical of his style,” he noted.

Subsequently, Queen Elizabeth II commissioned Enwonwu to create a bust of her eldest son, then-Prince Charles, now King Charles III.

Ben Enwonwu, Master of the British Empire

However, Enwonwu’s affiliation with the British monarchy drew criticism from those who viewed it as a betrayal of Nigerian nationalism. He received an MBE (Member of the British Empire) for his sculpture of the Queen at a time when Nigeria was on the brink of independence.

In a 1998 essay in African Studies Quarterly, Professor Nkiru Nzegwu admonished Enwonwu for “seeking validation from colonial masters” through his sculpture. Nonetheless, Enwonwu was a passionate supporter of Nigerian independence, having delivered a speech in Paris in 1956, stating:

“I know that when a country is suppressed by another politically, the native traditions of the art of the suppressed begin to die out. Then the artists also lose the values of their own artistic idiom. Art, under this circumstance, is doomed.”

Enwonwu navigated a complex identity, striving to reconcile his achievements within the British art scene with his African roots, especially after encountering racism during his time in London. He understood the challenge of adopting modern art techniques while resisting the colonial viewpoints that portrayed African art as primitive and tribal but celebrated Western advancement.

In a BBC interview in 1958, he asserted: “I will not accept an inferior position in the art world. Nor has my art been confined to ‘African’ because I have not accurately conveyed my reality.”

Throughout his lifetime, Enwonwu advocated for black art and artists, producing numerous series of paintings and sculptures that honored Africa and black culture, including his Africa Dances series developed in the 1960s.

An image of reconciliation

In the wake of the tragic Biafran War, Enwonwu’s works fervently celebrated Igbo culture. In 1971, he painted Christine, a portrait of an American hairstylist residing in Lagos with her British spouse, which fetched £1.1 million at auction in 2019. He created his most iconic piece, Tutu, in 1973, regarded as a symbol of reconciliation between the government and Biafran separatists. This series of three portraits, often dubbed the African Mona Lisa, portrays Ifẹ princess Adetutu Ademiluyi. All three portraits went missing after 1975, but the second version was rediscovered in 2017. In an interview with The Guardian, Nigerian-British author Ben Okri called this finding “the most significant discovery in contemporary African art in over 50 years.”

Enwonwu passed away in 1994 at the age of 76 after dedicating his life to bridging the African and Western art worlds. By merging European artistic methods with African and Igbo traditions, he fought against Western misconceptions about African art and showcased the identity of post-colonial Nigeria on a global platform.

His artworks continue to be displayed in esteemed venues across the world – as shown above, the then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson walked past Enwonwu’s Anyanwu at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

Enwonwu is recognized as a central figure of modernist art in Africa, influencing countless artists, including Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare. In a 2021 interview with New Internationalist, Shonibare reflected on how engaging with Enwonwu’s sculptures was among his earliest encounters with art and cultural heritage. Today, Enwonwu’s legacy stands testament to the transformative power of art in transcending borders and shaping identity in an ever-evolving world.