Out of Africa

A chance encounter with a huge, shimmering panel led art dealer John Martin to discover Nigerian sculptor Asiru Olatunde, a man who also owed his artistic career to an accidental find

- Carla Passino

LOVE strikes unexpectedly. For art dealer John Martin, it happened at a west London auction 20 years ago. There, tucked incongruously among tribal art and collectables, was an extraordinary panel, 'a huge, shimmering depiction of the Garden of Eden, its story picked out on aluminium sheets with thousands of tiny punch marks'. God, dressed as an African king, sat enthroned, flanked by angels; animals grazed peacefully in Paradise—but the Serpent rose up to tempt Eve, leading, in the next scene, to the Expulsion, with an elephant flattening a tree and the beginning of the eternal cycle of hunter and hunted. Mr Martin was smitten— and bought it.

‘At the time, I knew nothing of its maker, Asiru Olatunde, a Nigerian blacksmith of the Oshogbo school of artists that emerged in the 1960s, nor of the remarkable Ulli Beier, who had once owned the panel,’ he explains. ‘Beier was a scholar, editor and catalyst, instrumental in nurturing the community of artists and writers who gathered at the Mbari Club.’

A glittering blend of cultures: created by Nigerian blacksmith Asiru Olatunde in the 1960s, The Garden of Eden tells the Bible story through African scenes, from serpent to expulsion by elephant