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Did the Krays have a hand in lost sculptures case?

The Art Newspaper
1 November 2017
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copyright mirrorpix

copyright mirrorpix

It sounds like a film plot: take an illustrious Nigerian sculptor, his set of seven missing wooden sculptures and throw in the East End villains, the Kray twins. The saga begins in 1960 when the late artist Ben Enwonwu made works for the office of the UK tabloid, the Daily Mirror, in Holborn, central London.  But the wooden statues mysteriously vanished, only to show up in 2012 when a builder found them under a pile of rubbish in an old garage at a school in Bethnal Green. The sculptures were sold at auction in London the following year, fetching £361,250 (the Krays attended the school in question, hence the speculation about the rogue gangsters’ role in the mystery). All seven sculptures, on loan from the Access Bank collection, are due to go on show at the Art X Lagos fair in the Nigerian capital (3-5 November).

In the frameNigeria
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