In the 1980s his reputation in Africa was building. He worked nonstop and produced a lot, experimentally moving among and combining mediums in ways that few of his colleagues were. Through periodic residencies, like the one at Cummington, he stayed tuned into developments abroad, some of which would affect him significantly.Multiculturalism was in the air in the West, and starting to shape the market. High-profile shows like the 1989 “Magicians of the Earth” in Paris included, however marginally, new art from Africa. By 1990, when the Studio Museum in Harlem sent curators to Nigeria to scout for its “Contemporary African Artists: Changing Tradition,” Mr. Anatsui was high on the go-to list.

And when five artists from that exhibition were chosen for the 1990 Venice Biennale, he was one. The occasion was historic; it was the first time sub-Saharan artists had been in the Venice show. And the experience was invaluable. Not only was his art seen in an international forum, he also got a sweeping look at what the European-American market was promoting, much of it installation art on a spectacular scale.

Within a few years his career trajectory, already high in Africa, began to ascend abroad. In 1995 a London dealer, who came across a video of him sculpturing with a chain saw, offered a show that coincided with the city’s breakthrough Africa ’95 Festival. In the same year a traveling museum solo show in Japan came through. And in 1996 in New York the dealer Skoto Aghahowa, intent on positioning new African art in a global context, paired Mr. Anatsui in a show with Sol LeWitt.

A tipping point, or the start of one, arrived in 1998, when Mr. Anatsui invented a new art form. One day, by his own account, on a routine scavenging hunt through Nsukka, he picked up a trash bag filled with twist-off liquor bottle tops of a kind manufactured by Nigerian distilleries. Although it took him a while to realize it, he had found his ideal material: locally made, in ready supply and culturally loaded.

Liquor had come to Africa with colonialism. Production of rum propelled the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Later Africa had made a double-edged European import its own. And the history of all that was printed, in shorthand, in the brand names on the bottle tops: Bakassi, Chelsea, Dark Sailor, Ebeano.