Professor El Anatsui, African artist, wins highest award at the prestigious 56th Venice Biennale
The highest honour awarded by the Venice Biennale has gone this year to the artist, El Anatsui. The Golden Lion Award for Lifetime Achievement, one of the top accolades in the international art world, was presented to El Anatsui on 9 May at the Biennale’s historic headquarters in Italy. This was contained in a press release by Therese Nweke, Head of Media and Communications, Anatsui Art Initiative, Lagos.
In a recent statement announcing the award, the President of the Venice Biennale, Paolo Baratta, described El Anatsui as “perhaps the most significant African artist working on the continent today”. He also said :”The Golden Lion Award acknowledges not just his recent successes internationally, but also his artistic influence on two generations of artists working in West Africa”. Baratta ascribed Anatsui’s selection at this 56th Venice Biennale as based on “an acknowledgement of the sustained, crucial work he has done as an artist, mentor and teacher for the past 45 years”.
El Anatsui, who is Ghanaian, is a former Professor of Sculpture at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The jury, led by President Baratta and the Curator of the International Exhibition, OkwuiEnwezor, praised “the originality of Anatsui’s artistic vision” and his contributions to “the recognition of contemporary African artists in the global arena”.
As contained in the statement, included in Professor Anatsui’s vast artistic oeuvre are his now internationally acclaimed monumental, shimmering, chainmail-like, yet tactile, wall relief sculptures, created largely from bottle caps, and stitched together with copper thread. His work can be found in scores of private collections, globally and continentally, as well as in the permanent collections of at least 48 major international museums, 17 of which are in the U.S. Among notable repositories of Anatsui’s art are the Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y.; The British Museum; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo; The Guggenheim, Abu Dhabi; The World Bank Collection, Washington; The Rubell Family Collection, Miami; and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, Washington.
Professor Anatsui has exhibited on every continent, except Antarctica, and more than once at the art world’s most lauded event – the Venice Biennale. El Anatsui was recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) and one of the first Africans to become an Honorary Academician of Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts. He is a Laureate of The Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development in the Netherlands, as well as a recipient of other awards and prizes from Japan, Germany, the U.S., Britain and Italy. He is also the subject of numerous art books, biographies, dissertations, reviews, articles and films.
Anatsui was born in Anyako, and trained at the College of Art, University of Science and Technology, in Kumasi, in central Ghana. According to Wikipedia, he began teaching at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, in 1975, and has become affiliated with the Nsukka Group. Wikipedia adds further: “Anatsui’s preferred media are clay and wood, which he uses to create objects based on traditional Ghanaian beliefs and other subjects. He has cut wood with chainsaws and blackened it with acetylene torches; more recently, he has turned to installation art. Some of his works resemble woven cloths such as kente cloth. Anatsui also incorporates uli and nsibidi into his works alongside Ghanaian motifs.”
El Anatsui has exhibited his work around the world at the Brooklyn Museum (2013), the Clark Art Institute (2011), Rice University Art Gallery, Houston (2010), Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2008–09); National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. (2008); Fowler Museum at UCLA (2007); Venice Biennale (2007); Hayward Gallery (2005); Liverpool Biennial (2002); the National Museum of African Art (2001); the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (2001); the 8th Osaka Sculpture Triennale (1995); the 5th Gwangju Biennale (2004); and the Venice Biennale (1990).
A retrospective of his work, titled When I Last Wrote to You About Africa was organized by the Museum for African Art and opened at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, Canada, in October 2010. It toured venues in the United States for three years, concluding at the University of Michigan Art Museum
A major exhibition of recent works, entitled “Gravity and Grace: Monumental Works by El Anatsui,” had its New York premier at the Brooklyn Museum in February 2013. Organized by the Akron Art Museum (exhibition: 2012), the exhibition later traveled to the Des Moines Art Center (2013–14) and the Bass Museum of Art in Miami (2014).
In April 2015 the Venice Biennale announced that it has awarded El Anatsui with the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement. The board called the prize “acknowledges not just his recent successes internationally, but also his artistic influence amongst two generations of artists working in West Africa.
…with facts from Wikipedia