One of Zimbabwe’s foremost stone sculptors, Damian Manhuhwa, died from complications from a kidney ailment on January 23, friends and colleagues said. He was 54.
Manhuhwa died at the main hospital in Harare and was buried on January 26 in his home area in the Rusape district, 170km east of the Zimbabwean capital.
Some of his sculptures are on show in Loveland, Colorado, said Mishek Chidhumo, sales manager at the Chapungu Sculpture Park in eastern Harare, an artists’ cooperative where Manhuhwa was a member.
”His death is a great loss to the artistic community of this country,” said Chidhumo.
Manhuhwa first exhibited his work in the United States in Boston in 1987, where he won critical acclaim for his stone carvings in animal and human form that symbolically reflected African traditions and ancient beliefs.
Working in the medium of Zimbabwe’s indigenous verdite, serpentine and soapstone — green, yellow-green or brown limestone-type rock — he also exhibited widely in Britain, Germany, Australia and neighbouring South Africa, also to critical acclaim.
At the Chapungu Sculpture Park he was teacher and mentor to several successful young Zimbabwean stone sculptors whose counterparts in the West more routinely work in bronze, metal and granite, said Chidhumo.
Manhuhwa is survived by his wife and six children. — Sapa-AP