The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 17, 2025

Untitled B

1997

Magdalene Odundo

(British, born Nairobi, Kenya, 1950)
England, born in Kenya, 20th century
terracotta
Overall: 45.3 x 27.4 x 28.1 cm (17 13/16 x 10 13/16 x 11 1/16 in.)
John L. Severance Fund 1998.4
Location: Not on view

Did You Know?

This vessel was the Cleveland Museum of Art's first acquisition of contemporary art by an African artist.

Description

Dame Odundo’s vessels represent the height of technical skill and visual inventiveness. Trained in Kenya, India, and England—where she first began working in clay—her influences span millennia and continents. These sources include ancient sculptors working in Greece’s Cyclades islands; artists liken Maria Martínez from San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico; European modernists like Jean Arp and Henry Moore; and Gwari potters like Ladi Kwali. Kwali was Odundo’s primary instructor in Nigeria in 1974. Besides Kwali’s modernist works, she also adapted the shapes of historical Nupe vessels (left). This vessel’s sheen comes from its glaze and from the artist using tools to burnish (polish) its surface.
  • ?–1998
    Anthony Slayter-Ralph, Santa Barbara, CA
    1998–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art by purchase
  • Cooper, Emanuel. Magdalene Odundo (Aldershot ; Burlington, VT : Lund Humphries, 2004), p. 82, 119, cat. 115.
    Petridis, Constantine. South of the Sahara: Selected Works of African Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art; distributed by the University of Washington Press, 2003: 20, fig. 7.
    Cleveland Museum of Art, “Painting by 18th-century Italian Master Gaetano Gandolfi among Works Added to CMA Collection,” March 24, 1998, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives. archive.org
    Petridis, Constantijn. South of the Sahara: selected works of African art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2003. Reproduced: fig. 7, p. 20
  • From the Earth through Her Hands: African Ceramics. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 21, 2024-September 21, 2025).
    Michael Hue-Williams Fine Art, London, December 26, 1997-January 24, 1998.
  • {{cite web|title=Untitled B|url=false|author=Magdalene Odundo|year=1997|access-date=17 December 2025|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1998.4