HENRY MUNYARADZI
(1931-1998)

Henry Munyaradzi was born in Guruve in 1931. He had no formal education and spent his childhood herding cattle and hunting game.

Munyaradzi’s creative talent was to blossom many years later when, in 1967, he joined the rural community of sculptors at Tengenenge. Munyaradzi stayed at Tengenenge until 1975 and during his eight years there he firmly established himself as the master sculptor of that community.

Preferring to work on his own, he soon developed a distinctive style. Describing Munyaradzi’s work in 1983, Christopher Till, then the Director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, wrote: “Henry’s interest is sculptural perfection. He remains close to an aesthetic of art for art’s sake. His work has a highly individual stylized stamp, and is readily appreciated and understood by a Western aesthetically-oriented public.”

Munyaradzi is commonly influenced by the natural shape of the stone and will carefully choose a stone that he sees as having within it the form that he seeks to release. As he explained: “Every stone has got a sculpture in it, but only a sculptor can see it and release it.”