York's Shona Gallery
The
Blog
Stories of the artists and peoples behind the work: the sculptors, tribes, and traditions that have shaped our collection.
Gerald Takawira
Gerald Takawira was born in 1959 into one of Zimbabwe’s most celebrated sculptural families. The Takawira name is inseparable from the history of the Shona sculptural movement: John Takawira, Gerald’...
Agrippa Ndongwe
Agrippa Ndongwe was born in 1958 in Harare and began carving stone in the early 1980s, as the Shona sculptural movement was entering its second phase of international recognition. He...
Fungai Mwarowa
Fungai Mwarowa was born in 1955 in the Guruve district of Mashonaland Central, a region whose red earth sits above some of the finest stone deposits in Zimbabwe. He came...
Douglas Benhura
Douglas Benhura is among the most internationally recognized Shona sculptors of his generation, celebrated for a body of work that has found audiences and collectors on every continent. Born in...
Coster Balakasi
Coster Balakasi was born in 1970 in Malawi and came to the Zimbabwean stone-carving tradition as an outsider, arriving from a neighboring country with its own sculptural traditions and finding...