Life Cycle

Uzo Egonu was born in Onitsha in 1931. His first signs of interest in art was evident in his drawings during his education at Sacred Heart College, Calabar. He left Nigeria to the UK as a teenager in 1945 and enrolled in the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London where he studied painting and topography from 1949 to 1952. Till he died in London in 1996, he never came back to Nigeria except once on a 2-day visit in 1977 for the second World Festival of Black Arts and African Culture (FESTAC ’77) held in Lagos. However, Nigeria, and, in particular, Onitsha played a very central role in his art and he ensured he never lost touch with current events and activities in his homeland while abroad. He painted about his rich local culture and heritage back home in Onitsha using the modern prevalent styles of his days. He also explored the struggles of adaptation to independence by the continent. His paintings are an interesting, yet mind-bugging mix of very abstract and figurative forms, some with similarities to Nok terracotta, and they are rendered with a dynamic blend of colours of different hues.

Life Cycle is a rendition of several panels of abstract forms that tell the story of the stages and phases one goes through in life. The moments of anxiety; sadness and pain; kindness and joy; love; hardwork; failure and disappointment; pity; difficulty; and breakthrough all constitute the interesting sojourn and adventure.