From 16-18 October, Kamba Fine Art will exhibit for the second time at the Christie’s Multiplied Art Fair, at Christie’s South Kensington.
At Christie’s Multiplied Art Fair, Kamba Fine Art will be showing a series of monochrome etchings by renowned Nigerian master artist Bruce Onobrakpeya at Multiplied, a selection of prints by Ingrid Baars, Emmanuel Okoro sculptures, and print by the late Professor Ben Enwonwu titled ‘Tutu’. ‘Tutu’ is a print of an important African oil painting depicting Adetutu Ademiluyi, a member of the Ile-Ife Royal Family. The portrait of Adetutu, or Tutu as she was known, shows her dressed in traditional Yoruba attire, and it became famous in Africa after disappearing from trace.
Professor Benedict Chukwuka Enwonwu (1917-94) was born in Onitsha, Anambra State in Africa, and his artistic talents were spotted when he was a young student at Government College in Ibadan. He later studied at Goldsmith College of Art in London, and notably at the Ruskin and Slade Ashmolean in Oxford, where he graduated with first class honours in Sculpture. He was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists, and his career high was in 1956m when he became the first African to be commissioned to sculpt a bronze portrait of HM Queen Elizabeth II, which was exhibited at the Tate Gallery.
Bruce Onobrakpeya is a respected innovator of many specialist printing techniques, and has received international recognition with exhibitions at Tate Modern in London, the Smithsonian institution in Washington D.C, and an honourable mention at the Venice Biennale. Onobrakpeya (born 1932) is one of Nigeria, and indeed Africa’s, most prominent and collectable artists, and according to Emeritus Professor John Picton of the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS): "Bruce Onobrakpeya is among the most successful artists to have emerged in West Africa during the 20th century, with continuing and commanding influence on the generation of artists in Nigeria, who have come to maturity in the post colonial period."
Ingrid Baars produces digitally manipulated portraiture of strong African women, which merge classical notions of beauty with an otherworldly aesthetic. Her images are a symbiosis of classical and contemporary African portraiture. Baars graduated from the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam in the early 1990s, and after working as an illustrator and photographer she focussed on fine art, and began to manipulate imagery using digital techniques.
Multiplied 2015 is the 6th instalment of the UK’s only fair dedicated to contemporary art in editions. The Multiplied art fair is an important fixture during Frieze Week in London, one of the most significant periods in the international contemporary art calendar.