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拍品专文
Included in the 2025 exhibition Nigerian Modernism at Tate Modern, London, and previously on loan for five years to Wolfson College, Oxford, Woman Reading (1978) is an emblematic and visually enigmatic work by Uzo Egonu. Composed of tranquil silhouettes of mauve and violet, the titular woman sits cross-legged in an armchair, a lamp casting a warm glow across the book on her lap. The room’s furnishings are evoked through red, green and saffron geometries, their flat, planar forms a nod to both the printmaking techniques that Egonu was exploring during this period and to traditional textile patterns from his childhood in Nigeria. Awash in serenity and monumental in scale, Woman Reading encapsulates Egonu’s deft handling of colour through the transformation of artistic inheritances.
Born in 1931, Egonu emigrated to London in 1945 to study at Camberwell College of Arts, part of a generation of artists from the British colonies who moved to England in the aftermath of the Second World War. He would only return to Nigeria in 1977, just prior to painting the present work. Egonu’s extensive travels throughout Europe—including a brief stint living in Paris—brought him into contact with the titans of European Modernism, and throughout his career he worked to forge a new visual idiom, uniting Igbo artistic traditions with Western aesthetics. The sinuous lines and arabesque curvatures of Woman Reading recall Henri Matisse’s decorative drawings as well as Pablo Picasso’s depictions of seated women, specifically those of his partner Marie-Thérèse Walter from 1932. Indeed, in Egonu’s work, notes critic Adrian Searle, ‘the modern is inescapable’ (‘Nigerian Modernism review: sacred groves, a shackled king and astonishing hair’, The Guardian, 8 October 2025). Yet even as he interrogates art history’s stylistic movements, Egonu’s imagery seemingly exists in its own universe, and works such as Woman Reading boldly defy the constraints of place and time.
Born in 1931, Egonu emigrated to London in 1945 to study at Camberwell College of Arts, part of a generation of artists from the British colonies who moved to England in the aftermath of the Second World War. He would only return to Nigeria in 1977, just prior to painting the present work. Egonu’s extensive travels throughout Europe—including a brief stint living in Paris—brought him into contact with the titans of European Modernism, and throughout his career he worked to forge a new visual idiom, uniting Igbo artistic traditions with Western aesthetics. The sinuous lines and arabesque curvatures of Woman Reading recall Henri Matisse’s decorative drawings as well as Pablo Picasso’s depictions of seated women, specifically those of his partner Marie-Thérèse Walter from 1932. Indeed, in Egonu’s work, notes critic Adrian Searle, ‘the modern is inescapable’ (‘Nigerian Modernism review: sacred groves, a shackled king and astonishing hair’, The Guardian, 8 October 2025). Yet even as he interrogates art history’s stylistic movements, Egonu’s imagery seemingly exists in its own universe, and works such as Woman Reading boldly defy the constraints of place and time.