The word Anyanwu (‘eye of the sun’), refers to the Igbo practice of saluting the rising sun in honour of Chukwu, the Great Spirit.
The female figure is the powerful Igbo earth goddess Ani.
Eunice Olumide, the gallerist and super model states:
“Meticulously crafted, the figure holds such incredible beauty and poise that I find completely disarming – she is a truly captivating symbol of the role of women and the mother in the ancient, Nigerian Igbo tradition.
The viewer is invited on a journey that contemplates the majesty of the expression and indeed what lies beneath.”
In Igbo tradition, sculptors were viewed as intermediaries between the human and spirit world. They worked in a trance-like state, inspired by intense surges of mental energy.
Enwonwu later claimed that he had entered such a state when he created Anyanwu.
The sculpture’s form came to him in a vision early one morning as he hovered between dreaming and wakefulness:
“A supple graceful female form arising out of the sun in a brilliant shower of light…she loomed towards him in a wide curvilinear arch…the classic Ethiopianized features of the face and the decorative horizontal slats of the lower torso that receded into the horizon, tapering off to a point…”
The circumstances surrounding Anyanwu’s creation – Enwonwu’s spiritual inspiration – connects him with the Igbo tradition of the artist as spirit medium.
Often referred to as the ‘father of African modernism’, Enwonwu was greatly concerned with form and stylistic experimentation.
He was not afraid to think or engage in speculation while assisted by the light that comes from above.
What he saw or was revealed to him and he recorded or executed has and continues to aggrandize us all.
The sculpture goes to auction at Bonhams in London this evening with a pre auction estimate of £ 120,000 – 180,000/ € 140,000 – 210,000.
Happy bidding!