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Zimbabwean Sculpture Birth of a Contemporary Art Form
Olivier Sultan
Baobab Books, Harare, 1992. Distributed by African Books Collective, Oxford. 86 pp., 123 b/w photos, bibliography. $38 softcover.
Life in Stone provides an introduction to what has been inaccurately referred to as Shona sculpture. Virtually nonexistent before 1957, Zimbabwean stone sculpture is the result of a movement whose initial purpose was, in part, to create an artistic expression of national identity. The corpus of works has grown in size and reputation. In its fine-art (as opposed to tourist-art) form these sculptures now can be found in galleries from Zimbabwe to Los Angeles, fetching prices from $80 to $30,000. With Life in Stone, Olivier Sultan adds to the list of books on this subject, which includes hose by Marion Arnold, Fernando Mor, and, more recently, Celia Winter-Irving and Anthony and Laura Ponter.
Sultan's thirty pages of text, accompanied by 123 black-and-white illustrations, is divided into two sections: the first gives an account of how this movement came into being; the second provides a brief survey of fifteen highly acclaimed sculptors. Section one focuses on Frank McEwen, the first director of Zimbabwe's National Gallery, Harare (then the Rhodes National Gallery of Southern Rhodesia, Salisbury). Sultan establishes McEwen's credentials and place in the international art world before chronicling the role he...