Art, Design & Fashion
Landmark
Joseph Ndandarika
1940 – 1991
One of the founders of Zimbabwean stone sculpture
Landmark is level 2 of 4 in the Zimbabwe Hall of Fame: a first that opened a door, or the pre-eminent figure of their generation in this country. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
A figure of the first generation of Shona stone sculptors — the movement that became Zimbabwe's most recognised contribution to world art.
Joseph Ndandarika came to the National Gallery of Rhodesia in Salisbury as a teenager in the late 1950s, at the point when its director Frank McEwen opened a workshop school and began encouraging young Africans to carve rather than to copy European models.
He was among the first group to do it, alongside Nicholas Mukomberanwa, Henry Munyaradzi and Sylvester Mukomberanwa, and the movement they made — serpentine and springstone worked into figures drawn from Shona spiritual life, the mediums, the ancestors, the bird and animal forms — became the most internationally recognised art to come out of Zimbabwe.
Ndandarika had trained as a painter first and his sculpture kept a draughtsman's line. He worked at Tengenenge and in Harare, showed at the Musée Rodin in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York with the wider group, and his work is in collections across Europe and America. He died in 1991, and the generation of Zimbabwean sculptors working now traces directly to his.
He was among the first group to do it, alongside Nicholas Mukomberanwa, Henry Munyaradzi and Sylvester Mukomberanwa, and the movement they made — serpentine and springstone worked into figures drawn from Shona spiritual life, the mediums, the ancestors, the bird and animal forms — became the most internationally recognised art to come out of Zimbabwe.
Ndandarika had trained as a painter first and his sculpture kept a draughtsman's line. He worked at Tengenenge and in Harare, showed at the Musée Rodin in Paris and the Museum of Modern Art in New York with the wider group, and his work is in collections across Europe and America. He died in 1991, and the generation of Zimbabwean sculptors working now traces directly to his.
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