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Tengenenge
Tengenenge is a community of artists and their families located in the Guruve District of Zimbabwe. It has achieved international recognition because of the large number of sculptors who have lived and worked there since 1966. These include Fanizani Akuda, Bernard Matemera, Sylvester Mubayi, Henry Munyaradzi and Bernard Takawira. Establishment of the sculpture community The Tengenenge Sculpture Community was established by Tom Blomefield in 1966. He owned what had originally been a tobacco farm and chromium mine but found that it was by then uneconomic owing to the international sanctions against Rhodesia's white government led by Ian Smith, who had declared Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. Blomefield wrote that he sought an alternative source of income for his workforce, which materialized when the sculptor Crispen Chakanyuka visited and pointed out that the farm contained an outcrop of hard serpentine stone (part of the Great Dyke) which Blomfield obtained th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernard Matemera
Bernard Matemera (14 January 1946 – 4 March 2002) was a Zimbabwean sculptor. The sculptural movement of which he was part is usually referred to as "Shona sculpture" (see Shona art and Art of Zimbabwe), although some of its recognised members are not ethnically Shona. His whole professional career was spent at the Tengenenge Sculpture Community, 150 km north of Harare near Guruve. Bernard Matemera died in March 2002. Early life and work Matemera was the son of a village headman, living near the town of Guruve, Mashonaland in the far north of what was, in 1946, Southern Rhodesia. He spoke Zezuru, one of the Shona dialects, and had four years of formal primary schooling: like other boys, he herded cattle, made clay pots and carved wood. In 1963 Matemera was working as a contract tractor driver for tobacco farmers in Tengenenge and met Tom Blomefield, whose farm had extensive deposits of serpentine stone suitable for carving. By 1966, Blomefield wanted to diversify the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Munyaradzi
Henry Munyaradzi, also known as Henry Munyaradzi Mudzengerere, (1931 – 27 February 1998) was a Zimbabwean sculptor. The sculptural movement of which he was part is usually referred to as "Shona sculpture" (see Shona art and Art of Zimbabwe), although some of its recognised members are not ethnically Shona. He worked initially at the Tengenenge Sculpture Community, 150 km north of Harare near Guruve, which he joined in 1967. In that Community, and ultimately in the wider world of lovers of Zimbabwean art, he was known simply as 'Henry'. Henry Munyaradzi died in February 1998 and is buried in the Mukaera Christian village on the outskirts of Guruve. Early life and education Munyaradzi was the son of a ''mhondoro'', one of the traditional spiritual leaders of his community in Chipuriro (Sipolilo Tribal Trust land) about 30 km from Guruve, Mashonaland in the far north of what was, in 1931, Southern Rhodesia. He participated as a child in the traditional ceremonies su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sculpture Of Zimbabwe
Sculpture and in particular stone sculpture is an art for which Zimbabwe is well known around the world. Origins Central Zimbabwe contains the "Great Dyke" – a source of serpentine rocks of many types including a hard variety locally called springstone. An early precolonial culture of Shona peoples settled the high plateau around 900 AD and “Great Zimbabwe”, which dates from about 1250–1450 AD, was a stone-walled town showing evidence in its archaeology of skilled stone working. The walls were made of a local granite and no mortar was used in their construction. When excavated, six soapstone birds and a soapstone bowl were found in the eastern enclosure of the monument, so art forms in soapstone were part of that early culture and local inhabitants were already artistically predisposed, fashioning works from various natural materials such as fibres, wood, clay, and stone for functional, aesthetic, and ritual purposes. However, stone carving as art had no direct lineage ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fanizani Akuda
Fanizani Akuda, also known as Fanizani Phiri, was a member of the sculptural movement usually called "Shona sculpture" (see Shona art and Art of Zimbabwe), although he and some others of its recognised members were not ethnically Shona people, Shona. He worked initially at the Tengenenge, Tengenenge Sculpture Community, 150 km north of Harare near Guruve, which he joined in 1966. Fanizani died on 5 February 2011. Early life and education Fanizani Akuda, an ethnic Chewa people, Chewa was born in 1932 in what was then Northern Rhodesia. He received no formal schooling and in 1949 he moved to Southern Rhodesia in search of work. This led to employment as a cotton picker, bricklayer, and basket weaver: by 1966 he was working as a farm manager. However, in terms of his later success as a sculptor in stone, the most significant move came in that year when he was offered work by Tengenenge, Tom Blomefield, a white South-African-born farmer of tobacco whose farm at Tengenenge near Gur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
