Ben Enwonwu; the making of an African modernist.

9781580462358

Ben Enwonwu; the making of an African modernist.

Ogbechie, Sylvester Okwunodu.

U. of Rochester Press

2008

295 pages

$75.00

Hardcover

Rochester studies in African history and the diaspora; v.37

N7399

Exploring the work of Nigerian artist Ben Enwonwu (1917-94), Ogbechie (art history, U. of California at Santa Barbara) analyzes the cultural, political, and aesthetic factors that framed Enwonwu's pursuit of a modernist aesthetics and his role in the development of a specific discourse of modernity in 20th century Nigerian art. Ultimately, this intellectual biography of Enwonwu is concerned with the framing of a colonial subject as a modern artist and Enwonwu's struggle to escape the limitation of his colonially assigned roles in order to define a culturally relevant mode of modernist representation for his community, the emergent Nigerian nation, modern African art, and the global African Diaspora.

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