CARVED IN STONE : Sculptures Are a Part of Zimbabwe’s Heritage That Didn’t Need to Be Reformed

In 1957, the director of the National Gallery of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) provided tools to a group of Africans and encouraged them to carve in stone. Though not formally trained, these artists began to create work that, in just a few years, caused a sensation on the international art scene.

Since then, the fate of Zimbabwean sculptors has risen and fallen with the country’s political fortunes, almost disappearing in the tumultuous years before independence in 1980 and since then making a slow but steady climb back to international prominence.

Golden West College Fine Arts Gallery is displaying 32 Zimbabwean sculptures through April 3. The works are from the collection of Sharon Mayes, who first went to Zimbabwe in 1986 (with her husband, an AIDS researcher) and discovered the resurgent sculpting scene.

“I just fell in love with the work. It’s so accessible and emotional and personal,” said Mayes. “The work really affected me spiritually.”

Many of the pieces draw their inspiration and imagery from the animist traditions of the Shona, the dominant tribe in Zimbabwe, while others show increasing influence from Western artistic traditions, as well as a measure of political commentary on colonialism and other topics.

Mayes began collecting and brought about 50 pieces back to the United States, and friends started encouraging her to show the work. She arranged an exhibit in Palo Alto in 1990, and last year Mayes--who considers herself foremost a fiction writer--opened a Menlo Park gallery focusing on sculptures from Zimbabwe.

Her gallery, she says, is at best a break-even proposition: “My main goal,” said Mayes, “is to get people to see this work and learn about these wonderful people.”

The works range from highly stylized human and animal figures to more abstract, almost Cubist works. Rather than promote the work as a generic brand of ethnic art, Mayes emphasizes the individuality of the artists and what she sees as their place of prominence in the international contemporary art scene.

She has produced a video based on interviews with several of the artists, on view with the exhibit at Golden West. Artists on display at the college include Richard Mteki, an artist from the original Workshop School who sculpts mostly human figures in brown serpentine, and Brighton Sango, a second-generation sculptor whose work is more angular and abstract.

Some of the artists, especially the older ones, work almost in a trance-like state rather than from design: “The Shona are very tuned into the spirit world and the natural world,” said Mayes.

Englishman Frank McEwen is credited largely with sparking the sculpture movement in Zimbabwe. A friend to Picasso and Brancusi and the organizer of sculptor Henry Moore’s first exhibit, McEwen had become disillusioned by the European art scene by the ‘50s, moving from Paris to Africa to become national gallery director in hopes of developing an art that “would not depend on the whims of art critics, but upon some original manifestation of the artistic mind.”

He started the national gallery’s Workshop School primarily with members of the Shona tribe, a group whose carving tradition was long dormant. Several artists took quickly to carving in the abundant local stone (primarily serpentine and soapstone) and by 1963 McEwen was able to organize a show at the Museum of Contemporary Arts in London.

In the next several years, the works attracted the attention of powerful collectors and museums, with shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1964 and finally at the Musee Rodin in Paris in 1971.

By then, however, Rhodesia’s political situation was deteriorating. In 1965, prime minister Ian Smith had broken with Great Britain to avoid having to dismantle apartheid; in 1968, an international boycott against Rhodesia was enacted, shutting down much of the international market for artworks.

Finally, McEwen fled the country in 1974, after he was ordered by Smith to destroy a sculpture depicting a black man with his arm around a white woman.

With McEwen gone, the Workshop School was dismantled, and the artists dispersed to city jobs--driving taxis and buses, for instance--or to hide in the countryside. It wasn’t until independence in 1980 that they began to work again, joined by a new generation of sculptors.

One of McEwen’s fears was the sculptors would be tempted by the marketplace to turn out assembly line “airport art,” and a large tourist-oriented curio market has developed in Zimbabwe. But while Mayes concedes that “commercialization is a danger,” the “good stuff” is still being produced, and she believes the top artists will continue to “push the limits of their own materials and techniques.”

What: “Contemporary Shona Sculptors From Zimbabwe.”

When: Through April 3. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Monday through Friday; 6 to 9 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday.

Where: Fine Arts Gallery at Golden West College, 15744 Golden West St., Huntington Beach.

Whereabouts: From the San Diego (405) Freeway, take Golden West Street south a half-mile to the college.

Wherewithal: Admission is free.

Where to call: (714) 895-8783.