LONDON.- Works by internationally acclaimed Ghanaian contemporary artist El Anatsui will lead an impressive array of modern and contemporary African art at the Bonhams Africa Now sale in London on 22 May. A work by El Anatsui saw huge success at Bonhams Modern and Contemporary sale in February, where Peju’s Robe, one of his unmistakable shimmering tapestries of used bottle-caps, sold for £806,500. This sale will now feature earlier works from the artist’s oeuvre.

El Anatsui’s fragmented ceramic sculptures in manganese and clay are some of his earliest works. The Broken Pots series, estimated at £100,000-150,000, were first exhibited in 1979 at the British council in Enugu, Nigeria. Quite different in style from his trademark woven sculptures, these rare works are a striking example of El Anatsui’s lifelong practice of re-using found materials and incorporating traditional techniques to create modernist pieces. ‘When I made those pots,’ he said of the pieces, ‘Ghana’s economy was completely in tatters. I regard my process as an exhortation…things have to break in in order to start reshaping.’ Bomboy, constructed of molten glass and discarded beverage bottles, is a direct early precursor to the artist’s later celebrated use of bottle tops. It is estimated at £40,000-60,000.

His later works, Used Towel and Untitled, created at the end of the 1990s and estimated at £50,000-80,000 and £30,000-50,000 respectively, shows how El Anatsui’s artistic vision was developing dramatically over the years. As a student, he used to visit the Kumasi National Cultural Centre, where he learned the craft of weavers, potters, cloth-printers and carvers, all working in indigenous methods. He began to incorporate these crafts into his own work, which took on a distinctly Ghanaian aesthetic.

In Used Towel, the age-old Adinkra patterns are counterpoised by modern construction techniques. According to the artist, they are ‘a metaphor for the way in which the western powers had carved up and brutally divided the African continent amongst themselves, ripping through and destroying both local history and culture.’

El Anatsui has skyrocketed to global fame in the last decade, after his work was hung across the entire façades of Palazzo Fortuny, Venice, in 2007, the Palais Galleria, Paris in 2012, and the Royal Academy, London in 2013. Last year at the 56th Venice Biennale he won the Golden Lion lifetime achievement award.

‘El Anatsui has been in huge demand for some time,’ said Giles Peppiatt, head of African Modern and Contemporary Art at Bonhams. ‘His iconic pieces are internationally recognisable and we now have the opportunity to bring some of his earlier, lesser-known works to light.’