By Dr Tony Monda

NEVER in the history of art in this country has there been an artist who has managed to describe, depict and analyse the spiritual umbilical cord of African art as Nicholas Mukomberanwa.
This Zimbabwean sculptor philosophically and spiritually describes what characterises the essence of being an indigenous Zimbabwean.
Through his art, he described life as a positive inculcation of Zimbabwe’s socio-cultural ethos.
Zimbabwean sculptor, Nicholas Mukomberanwa was born Obert Matafi in November, 1940, in Buhera, in the south-east of Zimbabwe.
Mukomberanwa was the first born son of Malachia Matafi.
In 1958, the artist was christened Nicholas by the missionaries at St Benedict Mission.
However, in honour of an ancestor Nicholas took the surname ‘Mukomberanwa’ which he used officially throughout his life and career.
Nicholas Mukomberanwa was not only a Zimbabwean artist.
His portrayal of universal human morality encapsulated the genesis art and the Afro-specific content of good and evil of life.
He was rightly considered a universal figure in the world of contemporary art.
His aesthetic merged Shona traditions with post-colonial contemporaneity.
He looked at Zimbabwean culture and its human values from a worldly perspective.
He carved and articulated principles that not only espoused his cultural ethnicity, but that of humanity at large.
The artist’s work was aesthetically narrative and accessible in its content, despite its sophisticated and sometimes esoteric Shona spirituality.
His work can best be described as the epitome of Zimbabwean heraldry.
The heraldry of the country is about socio-cultural identity and the preservation of principles of ideals requisite for communal habitation; he thus advertised the country’s heritage through his work.
The Zimbabwean nation evolving and transforming as it has, from a background of Shona culture in which clanship and bonds of ancestral wisdom, an intense love of the land, its spirit, fauna and ecology which formed the basis of society’s organisation, was his cradle of inspiration.
Mukombwanwa’s early artworks of the mid-1970s to the early 1980s espoused his patriotism and pride in his Zimbabwean heritage.
This can be seen particularly in his numerous renditions of the national symbol of the Zimbabwe Bird, which he sculpted in a variety of guises well into the l990s.
Nicholas Mukomberanwa attended Zvishavane Primary School, followed by St. Benedict Mission in the Chiendambuya area. He showed a propensity towards art from a very early age and produced his first sculpture, in clay, at the age of 15.
In 1961, aged 17, he was encouraged to move to Serima Mission in Masvingo Province, where his artistic skills could be better nurtured and refined.
At Serima Mission under the guidance of Father Groeber, Mukomberanwa was taught wood carving and encouraged to sculpt statues that blended Christian iconography in traditional African forms and styles.At Serima Mission, he produced his first innovative piece based on his Shona traditions entitled ‘The Chief’.
This particular work of art deviated from the Euro-centric Christian icons espoused by the missionaries and led to his expulsion from the mission school only a year after his prolific production of wood carvings that are still located at the mission today.
His strong African cultural beliefs and religious adherence to his traditions was a very radical stance for a young boy to take in the face of religious and racial colonisation.
His expulsion from the mission, however, only served to fortify his beliefs in the relevance of Shona culture for the rest of his life.
Following his expulsion in 1962, Mukomberanwa moved to Harare (then Salisbury), where he was forced to find a job.
He enrolled and received training in the British South African Police force where he received training as a policeman.
He remained in the police force until the height of the war of liberation, when he left in 1976 and made a conscious decision to become a fulltime artist.
During this time, he came into contact with the late Frank McEwen, an arts advisor for the British Council who became the first director for the newly opened Rhodesia National Gallery, now the National Gallery of Zimbabwe.
At the early workshop school at the National Gallery, Mukomberanwa once again excelled at his craft and soon became one of the country’s finest sculptors.
The Scotsman McEwen, highly impressed by his young apprentice said of him: “…as one of the greatest hard stone sculptors of our times whose talent lies in his ability to express human emotion with deep accuracy and clarity.”
As a stone sculptor intensely proud of his own culture, Mukomberanwa expressed his vivid visions with great conviction.
He understood and prized his Shona traditions.
He was a cultural revolutionary who conveyed with extraordinary tenderness, the intimacy of a mother and child bonding, the delicateness of a child in pain, the suffering of a war victim, the fear of Rhodesian raids, the strength of mothers and the mystique of and strength of Shona spiritual life and beliefs.
With Mukomberanwa there were no limits to the human expressions he conveyed through his stone art.
The artist’s capacity to continually invent new styles and techniques in his stone sculpture was a gift which often bewildered his admirers, fellow artists, writers and critics.
Despite his world-wide success, Nicholas Mukomberanwa remained true to himself with a jovial and humble disposition.
His determined strength of character and physical endurance allowed him to work relentlessly, sometimes late into the night.
His success on international art platforms enabled him top purchase a farm in Ruwa where he was one of the first indigenous farmers.
He excelled and produced bumper crops of maize and peanuts from the mid 1980s.
Mukombweranwa was not only a sculptor, he was an art teacher, a farmer, an environmentalist, an indigenous social critic, philosopher and philanthropist.
He lived on his farm in Ruwa and sculpted with great commitment until his untimely death in November 2002.
His works can be found in prestigious collections of art throughout the world, including the British Museum, the Rothchild Collection, Alfred Barr Collection, Michelina Andreucci Collection, The Rockefeller Collection, Queen Elizabeth II Collection, Pat Pearce Collection, Chapungu Village Collection, Frank McEwen Collection, Bill Karg Gallery, and in the collections of Cicely Tyson, Miles Davis, Ferdinando Mor, Ulli Bier, Michael Sheppard,The Commonwealth Institute, Queen Sophia of Spain, Mano Dibango and other private collections in Europe, America and Australia.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD. in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA (Doctorate in Business Administration) and Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a writer, musician, art critic, practicing artist and Corporate Image Consultant. He is also a specialist Art Consultant, Post-Colonial Scholar, Zimbabwean Socio-Economic analyst and researcher.