작품 상세

Estimate: ₦ 6,000,000-7,000,000 | $13,100-15,300 | Osaghae’s paintings indeed represent one of the most expressive experimental approaches to figuration, colouring and composition. He stretched this experimentation to unimaginable extreme and beauty. Often taking his view from the most startling and unexpected angles, the artist sets the viewer on a playful, yet contemplative experience of the two-dimensional space. Figures and colours are used to create drama, gestures, suspense, yet in a way that soothes and comforts even when the subject is political. Such artistic genius and mastery of the visual language and manipulation of the picture plane would attract envious admiration from Degas. In this political composition, two hands of a partly exposed figure stretch out towards schematic figures and patches of flat colours in a “C” shape, that could also represent human figures in what appears as seeking to create a dialogue of tension and tranquillity, chaos and order, the duality of existing opposites we all often experience in life. (JB) | Ben Osaghae (Nigerian, 1962-2017), Our Stolen Voices, 2013, Acrylic on canvas, 140.5 x 140.5 cm. (55¼ x 55¼ in.), Signed and dated (lower left).