UCSB Art Historian Publishes Monograph on African Artist Ben Enwonwu
Source: UCSB Culled from: http://www.edhat.com/site/tidbit.cfm?nid=17632&linkSource=edhat.com (Santa Barbara, Calif.) - During the period from 1950 to 1965, Ben Enwonwu was the most famous artist of African ancestry anywhere in the world. He produced a sculpture of Queen Elizabeth II, traveled to the United States as a guest of the Harmon Foundation and the State Department, and exhibited his work alongside those of Pablo Picasso and other prominent modernists. More than 45 years later, however, Enwonwu has fallen into relative obscurity. Now, Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, an associate professor of art history at UC Santa Barbara, has written a monograph on the life and work of Enwonwu. Titled “Ben Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist” (The University of Rochester Press, 2008), it is the first significant biography published about this modern African artist. “His pedigree justifies the need to produce a coherent narrative of his life and career,” said Ogbechie, who first bega...