New acquisitions display: Uzo Egonu

Curated by Makella Ama Ketedzi and Louis Platman.
Supported by Culture&.

Born in Nigeria, Egonu moved to London at fourteen and studied at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts. Egonu’s colourful and stylised prints blur the lines between abstraction and figuration. Themes delve into addiction, urban life, and Igbo folkloric traditions.

In addition to the prints on display, visitors can read more about Egonu’s life and work in two reading nooks installed as part of the exhibition, as well as listen to some of the folk tales that inspired Egonu’s art, as read by Chloe Filani, Tatenda Naomi Matsvai and Nikita Sena.

Prints accepted by HM Government in Lieu of Inheritance Tax from the estate of Alan Cox and allocated to the Museum of the Home, 2024.

This display is in our Home Galleries, in the Undercroft. Plan your visit and navigate the museum with our free digital guide on Bloomberg Connects.

About the artist

Born in Onitsha, Nigeria in 1931, Uzo Egonu moved to Britain at the age of fourteen, and went on to study at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London, from 1949-1952.

Egonu, who arrived in London in 1945, went through major displacement of political and cultural identity in the metropolis. First, he defined himself (or was de‐ fined) as an African, then with Nigeria’s independence as a Nigerian; then as a Biafran during the failed Biafra secession bid (a defining moment for his Igbo identity), and later as a Nigerian once the threat of secession was quelled by Nigerian military.

Each of these shifts in self-definition played out in Egonu’s themes and in his efforts to carve out a niche for his practice in the European art establishment.