Bernard Matemera
Bernard Matemera | |
---|---|
Born | Bernard Matemera 14 January 1946 Guruve, Shona sculpture |
Awards | Award of Honour (Lalit Kala Akademi) VI Triennale, New Delhi, India, 1986 |
Bernard Matemera (14 January 1946 – 4 March 2002)
Bernard Matemera died in March 2002.
Early life and work
Matemera was the son of a village headman, living near the town of
Works by Matemera and his colleagues were exhibited in the
Later life and exhibitions
Matemera had two wives, with whom he had eight children, and he stayed at Tengenenge throughout the war for Zimbabwean Independence at a time when many other artists abandoned their way of life.[2] He became the symbolic leader of the community and from the 1980s gained worldwide recognition, with works included in exhibitions in the US, UK, Germany, The Netherlands and elsewhere.
Matemera's sculptures are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, the Chapungu Sculpture Park, the Museum fur Völkerkunde, Frankfurt and many others. In 1987, Matemera was invited to Yugoslavia to make a large sculpture at the "Josip Broz Tito" Art Gallery of the Nonaligned Countries in Titograd. Celia Winter-Irving chose Matemera's work "Man turning into hippo" to illustrate the front cover of the paperback version of her classic book on Zimbabwean sculpture.[5]
Many of Matemera's exhibition pieces, such as Great Spirit Woman (Serpentine, 1982), have toured worldwide; for example to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1990,[6] which depicts it on the front cover of the exhibition's catalogue. The catalogue "Chapungu: Culture and Legend – A Culture in Stone" for the exhibition at Kew Gardens in 2000 has pictures of this and four other of Matemera's sculptures: Chapungu (Serpentine) on p. 2, The Man who Ate his Totem (Springstone, 1998) on p. 42-43, Young Bull (Springstone, 1992) on p. 54-55, Metamorphosis (Springstone, 1995) on p. 94-95 and "Earth Spirit" (Serpentine, 1988) on p. 96-97.[7] Several of these have characteristic rounded body-shapes and only two or three fingers or toes on each hand or foot. As explained by Olivier Sultan, "Matemera finds his inspiration in his dreams. He was haunted by 3-fingered beings, a residual myth or memory, of a tribe that live in the northern part of the country. His massive pieces have a bewitching character, halfway between the comic and the tragic."[8]
Matemera sculpted mainly in grey or black
Matemera deals in pleasures of the flesh. To him sexuality means a healthy appetite, to be nourished with opportunity and spiced with variety. His sculptures speak in a highly suggestive body language. He is the creator of sculpture in the raw — huge naked figures with breasts, buttocks and bulges, charged with sexual energy and all at odds with their massive proportion and bulk.... There is in these sculptures an unspent power and a reserve of energy.[5]
Selected solo or group exhibitions
- 1968 New African Art, MOMA, New York, US
- 1969 Lidchi Art Gallery, South Africa
- 1980 Feingarten Gallery, Los Angeles, US
- 1981 Art from Africa, London
- 1982 Janet Fleisher Gallery, Philadelphia, US
- 1985 Kresge Art Museum, Michigan, US
- 1988 African metamorphosis, National Gallery, Harare, Zimbabwe
- 1989 Whispering the Gospel of Sculpture, National Gallery of Zimbabwe
- 1989 Zimbabwe op de Berg, Foundation Beelden op de Berg, Wageningen, The Netherlands
- 1990 Contemporary, stone carving from Zimbabwe, Millesgarden Museum, Stockholm, Sweden and Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK
- 1991 Milt Pinsel und Muszel, Germany
- 1992 Stone Sculpture, Zimbabwe, CCrt Galleries, UK
- 1994 Tengenenge Old Tengenenge New, Afrika Museum, Berg en Dal, The Netherlands
- 1997 Musee de Jardin, Paris, France
- 1998 Botanic Garden, Hamburg, Germany
- 2000 Chapungu: Custom and Legend – A Culture in Stone, Kew Gardens, UK
Gallery
- African Contemporary Art Gallery[9]
See also
References
- ^ Mphisa, Rex (6 March 2002). "Zimbabwe: Stone Sculptor Matemera Dies" – via AllAfrica.
- ^ a b "Biography from National Gallery of Zimbabwe". Archived from the original on 2011-09-30. Retrieved 2011-06-30.
- ISBN 90-806237-2-5
- ^ Blomefield T. Foreword in Catalogue "Talking Stones II", Contemporary Fine Art Gallery, Eton, 1993. (No ISBN)
- ^ ISBN 0-908309-11-2(Cloth bound)
- ISBN 1-871480-04-3
- ^ Catalogue published by Chapungu Sculpture Park, 2000, 136pp printed in full colour, with photographs by Jerry Hardman-Jones and text by Roy Guthrie (no ISBN)
- ISBN 978-1-77909-023-2
- ^ "African Contemporary - Contemporary African Art Gallery: George LILANGA, The TINGATINGA School". 25 December 2006. Archived from the original on 25 December 2006.
Further reading
- Harrie Leyten. "Tengenenge", Drukkerij Bakker/M.C. Escher Foundation, 1994, ISBN 90-74281-05-2
- ISBN 90-806237-2-5