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Concept
Bernard Matemera
Summary
Bernard Matemera (14 January 1946 – 4 March 2002) was a Zimbabwean sculptor. The sculptural movement of which he was part is usually referred to as "Shona sculpture" (see Shona art and Art of Zimbabwe), although some of its recognised members are not ethnically Shona. His whole professional career was spent at the Tengenenge Sculpture Community, 150 km north of Harare near Guruve.
Bernard Matemera died in March 2002.
Matemera was the son of a village headman, living near the town of Guruve, Mashonaland in the far north of what was, in 1946, Southern Rhodesia. He spoke Zezuru, one of the Shona dialects, and had four years of formal primary schooling: like other boys, he herded cattle, made clay pots and carved wood. In 1963 Matemera was working as a contract tractor driver for tobacco farmers in Tengenenge and met Tom Blomefield, whose farm had extensive deposits of serpentine stone suitable for carving. By 1966, Blomefield wanted to diversify the use of his land and welcomed new sculptors onto it to form a community of working artists. This was in part because at that time there were international sanctions against Rhodesia's white government led by Ian Smith, who had declared Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, and tobacco was no longer able to generate sufficient income. Matemara was one of the first artists to take up sculpting full-time, joining others including Henry Munyaradzi, Josia Manzi, Fanizani Akuda, Sylvester Mubayi and Leman Moses, who formed part of what is now called the First Generation of Zimbabwean sculptors in hard stones.
Works by Matemera and his colleagues were exhibited in the Rhodes National Gallery whose founding director, Frank McEwen, was very influential in bringing them to the attention of the international art community. Matemera first contributed to the Annual Exhibitions in the Gallery in 1967 and 1968: in 1969 McEwen took a group of works, mainly from Tengenenge, to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and elsewhere in the US, to critical acclaim.
Official source
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