Anatsui, El, 1944-

found: E-mail from National Museum of African Art, Mar. 23, 1998(Sculptor's surname is Anatsui; his first name is El; his full name, which he does not use professionally, is Emmanuel Kwami Anatsui)

found: Dictionary of African Biography, accessed January 16, 2015, via Oxford African American Studies Center database:(El, Anatsui; painter, sculptor; born in 1944 in Anyako, Ghana; attended the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana (1965-1969); was influenced by the work of Oku Ampofo, Vincent Akwete Kofi, and Kofi Antubam, emphasizing indigenous art forms; replaced Kofi Antubam as national artist, encouraging the emergence of new national identity in Ghana; his first exhibition at Nsukka (1979) produced work reminiscent of traditional woodcarvers from Awka in Nigeria the cloth strips of Ewe and Asante kente weavers in Ghana (1980's); used old materials into his work, in a style incorporated in his work, Bright Underwear of a Fallen God (1988), and The Ancestors Converged Again (1988, 1995); exhibited at the Venice Biennale (2007); was one of five representatives from Africa in Five Contemporary African Artists at the forty-fourth Venice Biennale in Venice, Italy)

found: Wikipedia, Apr. 25, 2016(El Anatsui (b. 1944) is a Ghanaian sculptor active for much of his career in Nigeria; has drawn particular international attention in recent years for his iconic "bottle-top installations", distinctive large-scale assemblages of thousands of pieces of aluminium sourced from alcohol recycling stations and sewn together with copper wire, transformed into metallic cloth-like wall sculptures in a way that can "draw connections between consumption, waste, and the environment") - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Anatsui