PROFILES OF SOME POPULAR SCULPTORS IN ZIMBABWE!

Nicholas Mukomberanwa
He was born in 1940 in Buhera and trained wood carving in 1960s at Serima Mission by Father Groeber .
He was inspired by biblical emergery and traditional African masks.Nicholas developed personal style using the edges of wooden cubes he was given to curve.He preferred right angles and geometric forms.
Nicholas expelled from Serima Mission for disobeying the mission rules and later found a job as a policeman which he worked for 15 years.He spent most of his spare time drawing and curving.
In 1962 he joined workshop school of the then Rhodesia National Gallery.Where he slowly move away from religious iconography and strengthened his free original style. Nicholas acknowledge the huge influence of McWen had in his artistic prowess.
Nicholas was an extraordinary artist who dislike copying and always encourage his collegues to create something unique and new.He favoured symmetry ,hard edges ,stylisation ,a highly polished surfaces and exageration of future.
The works sometimes suggest African masks and radiate a magnetism that is almost magical.His main themes are ,the family unity and shona myth which have assumed increasing importance for him ,that 's dowality being and now to a lasser extent religion.
Henry Munyaradzi
Henry is reowned stone sculptor In Zimbabwe .Born in 1931. In the Chingwaro village in Muzarabani .Henry's totem is Nzou ,the elephant.His upbringing was typically rural.He didn't attend a formal school.Henry worked in the in the area of birth as a herdboy,assistant carpenter as well as a farm worker in Guruve farming area.Henry's surname Munyaradzi means one who brings peace,reconciliation and harmony.According to sultan (1972),this might have moulded the self-taught artist into one who sees bondage in stone and always wants to set free by shaping it according to his deamed degrees of freedom and immortality. Henry was influenced by his African cultural sense in which its qualities were the norm of cultural drive.He drew inspiration and imagination from shapes of the stone itself.He greatly respects the stone he uses and its original shape.
In 1967 ,Henry joined the Tengenenge school of Art during its inception by the former commercial farmer Tom Blomfield.He perfected his work in the schoo till 1975.Henry favoured to work on the serpentine stone .He produced the stone into free spirit of animals,man ,woman ,the moon and the wind.Henry's quest to express beings and spirits into stone is the influential factor behind the production of "The window." The window was completed in September 1988 and it shows an elogated face of woman features. The face seems to represent a life in which manners are well read.The tilted face portrays the African woman in her full manners of asking rather than demanding from a husband.Most cultured woman show such good manners.
Through his work ,Henry managed to purchase a farm and he died in 1998.
Agness Nyanhongo
Agness was born in 1960 .She trained at BAT workshop School National Gallery and at Chapungu .At Chapungu it was informal meaning that she learn from observation,watching others at work.She is married to sculptor Joseph Munemo.
While she developed as an artist and treated by men as their peer .She has not divorced herself from traditonal role of the shona woman that of being both a wife and mother.Her role model was her father Mr Claude Nyanhongo a sculptor.Though got a lot of assistance from her father.She came naturally to be a reowned sculptor.
Her experience improved her technique and most importantly broadening and deepening her understanding of Art.Agness ' involvement with the culture is highly subjective and her work potrays how her culture affects her personal and private circumstances as it led her to devorce her husband and never led her to quit her self concepts.
Her works are represented in in overseas galleries as well as in the Zimbabwe National Gallery .She won an award of merit with her piece of stone sculpture called Refugee mother and child.Feminism is unknown to her but wishing to be successfull artist to break the traditional belief that women can't do it in sculpture which is a men dominated work.
REFERENCE
Celia Winter Irving(1991)Stone scupture in Zimbabwe,Roblaw Publishers,Harare
Zimbabwe weldart competition ,1986 award of merits.
Zimbabwe Heritage Exhibition ,National Gallery of Zimbabwe 1987 ,Award of Distrition.
One Person Exhibition 1987,PG Gallery National Gallery of Zimbabwe.