Henry Munyaradzi

Known simply as 'Henry', the most widely known Zimbabwean sculptor is like a magician, a sage who knows how to find the essential and is, therefore, able to translate the essence of any being or spirit into stone. With care and tenderness, he selects the stone which he feels contains the spirit of an animal, a man, the moon or even the wind. He then relentlessly works to free the spirit, immortalizing it on the face of stele3 with an hypnotic gaze. The simple, questioning faces he carves have the purity of a geometrical signature, of a perfect label, with thin, straight, determined lines barely touching the stone - a sign of his deep respect for it. His characters stare out at us as if asking that we question ourselves. Their intense gaze is naive, a naivety that contains an undisguised truth: a lucid, demanding, almost moral naivety. His creations belong to the rock from which they emerge; they achieve such perfection that we can only say: 'It could not be otherwise. This stone could only contain that character I see it now.' Almost as if Henry helped Nature to achieve its purpose, to its epitome, the work of art.
Henry is a self-taught man who hardly speaks Englis having had no formal education. He has successively been a herdsboy, a carpenter's assistant and an agricultural worker. (on the large tobacco farms in the Guruve area of northern Zimbabwe) and has always for a very meagre salary. Born in 1931, Munyaradzi, the son of a medium, has the qualities the Shona people claim to be theirs: profundity, wisdom, humour and seriousness. 'Munyaradzi' means 'the one who brings peace, who reconciles'.

In 1967, attracted by the sound of hammering on stone, he discovered the Tengenenge community, one year after Tom Blomefield started it. Fascinated with the carving of serpentine, he stayeduntil 1975, the universality of his style rapidly making him one of the major 'Shona' artists in the movement. From the 1970s, his work was exhibited in Paris at the Museum of Modern Art and at the Rodin Museum as well as in L.ondon, New York and other galleries throughout the world.

Since 1985, Henry Munyaradzi has been working on his farm, under huge eucalyptus trees, in his worker's overalls, surrounded by serpentine blocks. Constantly in touch with nature, he is a humble, meditative man who seems surprised by his immense success. Although the wealthiest artist in Zimbabwe, he has a shy, anxious air about him, reminiscent of his monoliths.

A member of the Apostolic Faith, Henry does not want to keep any sculpture, even after his death. His most important objective is to work hard and meet his orders. Although he is very attached to Shona culture and regrets that 'young peopletoday want to imitate white people'4 he does not speak in mystifying terms. 'Sculpture is, before anything else, work, that is giving life to a block of inanimate stone.' 5