Some Featured Shona Artists
Fanizani Akuda
As part of the original cadre called the 'First Generation', Fanizani Akuda contributed a truly distinct creative style and vision. The First Generation is the important cadre of Zimbabwean men who were first recognized for their sculpting talent and contribution to the renaissance of Shona stone sculpture. These artists established themselves as a creative force and benchmark by which inspired all later generations.
From the beginning, Fanizani Akuda sculpture was unique among the Zimbabwean sculptors. Fanizani's distinctive style of curved and roun ded forms is inspired by human and animal forms, which are often combined in metamorphosis. His work is distinguished by smiling figures, happy families and interaction between humans and animals often in pairs or groups. Not forgetting the "slit eyes", one of his notable features, became his "trademark". His work is well-known for its bulging shapes, seemingly naíve, yet most primal and strong. It is, without a doubt, a most unique expression in stone.
He has earned a tremendous amount of exposure world wide and has exhibited in all of the most important museums in the world from the MOMA to the Centre George Pompidou or the Rodin Museum.
Dominic Benhura
Benhura is one of the “top ten” sculptors of Zimbabwe. Numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, national as well as international honourings and awards make him one of the most successful artists of the African continent.
Already before the age of thirty, he was counted amongst the most significant representatives of the so called “Second Generation”.
What has made him this outstanding artist? Maybe it is the ability to give the stone a lively appearance as with the sculpture “Leap frog”. Maybe it is the perfection with which he understands to ‘freeze in a snapshot dynamic movement like “Swing me mama”. Maybe it is his wonderful gift of observation that lets him capture scenes of everyday life, be it the mother scolding her child or friends exchanging a secret.
His figures lack the individual, heads are half balls without faces, hands only suggested, extremely stylised as in woodcarvings. With this reduction, Dominic Benhura causes the observer to focus on the situation, not the individual in the foreground of his figurative compositions but the interaction. Often the observer gets drawn in by the enigmatic wit of depiction, and sometimes by the opposite - the sadness one feels while observing the sculpture. Dominic Benhura’s sculptures speak a language universally understood.
Colleen Madamombe
Colleen Madamombe holds a somewhat inspirational role within the stone sculpture movement as she is one of only a handful of women sculptors in Zimbabwe, and often considered the best.
Her work shows depth and in sight into the plight of women in a traditionally male dominated culture. Her subject matter is deeply rooted in the traditional role of Shona women. Her powerful images, their energy and movement, the contrast of rough and polished parts of the stone, make Colleen Madamombe’s stone sculpture some of Zimbabwe’s most dynamic. Her style is individual and emotionally involved, she often works with big and hard stones mainly springstone and opal creating the sized sculptures of women and their children that make people smile everywhere they are shown.
She represents the voice of a new generation of Zimbabwean women. She declares, “I am inspired by the activity of women and I work hard to show this in my sculpture. In recent pieces I have used natural areas of the stone with rough workings to emphasise this movement – the texture follows the rhythms of the body. This contrasts with the more finished areas of the face and hands.”
Jonathan Mhondorohuma
Jonathan Mhondorohuma is undoubtedly one of the major young talents of Zimbabwean stone sculpture. He is preceded by the likes of Benhura and Supini but is consolidating his position daily. His work can be seen as classical within the Zimbabwean context, as he attempts to give form to his past. An exciting, if not erotic factor in Jonathan's work is the theme of sexual relations between man and woman, in all their phases. His ‘‘Book reader’’ series has also received wide acclaim and is an area he is currently exploring.
Washington Msonza
When viewing the magnitude of Washington Msonza’s sculptures, it is hard to believe his early pieces were small. He mainly sculpted women in fancy dresses which he sold to tourists. When his sculptures became bigger and more imaginative they were eagerly bought up by local galleries like Nhukutu Gallery, Chapungu Sculpture Park and Springstone Gallery.
In 1991 he participated in the annual Heritage Exhibition of the Zimbabwe National Gallery and afterwards sold his pieces directly to numerous private collectors and galleries in South Africa, Germany, Netherlands and the US.
In 2000, Washington was one of the only two Zimbabwean sculptors invited to participate in the International Changchun Sculpture Symposium in China. There he produced his biggest sculpture to date entitled “Angel protecting lover” reaching three meters high and made from white marble. It earned him a much acclaimed honorary Changchun International Sculpture Diploma, the friendship and admiration of the Chinese people, as well as the respect of the other fifty participating international sculptors.
All sculptures of Washington have a biblical meaning and he is a member of the apostolic faith. It is the dream of Washington, “If people from every continent could watch me while before their eyes, I can transform a rock into a beautiful sculpture of lasting beauty.”
