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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2011 > August > 25 > Entry
Fall arts picks: ‘El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You About Africa’
Ghanaian-born Nigeria-based artist El Anatsui blends global, local and personal histories in riveting multi-media work that has made him one of the most compelling artists on the international scene.
Organized by Museum for African Art to inaugurate its new building in New York, a retrospective exhibit, “When Last I Wrote to You About Africa,” comes to the Blanton Museum of Art, opening Sept. 25 and continues through Jan. 22.
At the beginning of his career, Anatsui, who was born in 1944, first worked in wood, paint and clay, even using chainsaws to carve wood.
But it’s his shimmering, undulating metal sculptures and wall hangings that captivated world art audiences more than two decade ago, catapulting Anatsui to international acclaim. With Nigerian liquor bottlecaps that have been cut, folded and bent, and then seemingly woven together with wire, Anatsui’s usually large metal works suggest luxuriantly textured tapestries or billowing masses of traditional African fabric. And yet they are loaded with references to contemporary issues such as addiction or the colonial legacy of alcohol and other European influences.
Austin collectors Jeanne and Michael Klein have given one of Anatsui’s metal wall sculptures to the Blanton as a promised gift and it has on display since 2009. Support for the traveling exhibit is provided by the Kleins.
“El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa” opens Sept. 25. See www.blantonmuseum.org for more information.
Image: “Untitled,” 2007. Copper, aluminum. 144 x 195 inches. Promised gift of Jeanne and Michael Klein. Blanton Museum of Art.
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