BY DR TONY MICHEL MONDA
Modernism which was highly influenced by classical African art, is a term applied to the innovative development of the arts in the 20th Century which saw a break with realism and naturalism and other such traditional art forms in Europe and the Americas.
African Afro-modernism in Zimbabwe was firmly established in the new post-independence era in the early 1980s, with artists such as Ackence Makore, Nicholas Mukomberanwa, Moses Masaya and Brighton Sango introducing sophisticated cubist-inspired artworks.
These forays, investigations and experiments carried out by these artists were to become the genesis of African Abstraction in Zimbabwe.
The new movement propelled and inspired a handful of independent Zimbabwean artists to progress beyond the Afro-stylized naturalism that had defined Western appropriated African art at this point in history.
Brighton ‘Zoto’ Sango (1958-1995), was a contemporary Zimbabwean sculptor and significant member of the Second Generation of Zimbabwean sculptors who broke away from the traditions set by the First-Generation artists such as Sylvester Mubayi, John Takawira, Joram Mariga, Bernard Matemera and Boira Mteki amongst others.
Sango’s works were amongst the earliest pure abstract sculptures produced in Zimbabwe. His lyrical forms and feeling for material made him one of this country’s most influential sculptors of the late-1980s and early-1990s. The Second Generation of artists such as Tapfuma Gutsa, Eddie Masaya Cosmas Muchenje, and Arthur Fata looked for materials other than stone to express their ideas and presented visual renderings of life removed from the traditional guiding principles of Shona art.
Universal values and global concepts were fast becoming a source of artistic inspiration, but often the subject matter explored by the Second Generation’s sculptors were based on simple themes and experiences of daily life. The poignancy and sense of humanity was as valuable an insight into contemporary society as that of traditional Shona society explored by the First Generation Sculptors.
For example, Brighton Sango and Nicholas Mukomberanwa both dealt with universal accessible themes such as emotions and physical states common to mankind.
Brighton Sango was one of the most distinctive Zimbabwean artists who influenced an entire community with his unique indigenous African abstraction which can still be seen in works emanating from his home area of Guruve. He introduced a neo-Afro-Cubism to the language of stone sculpture in Zimbabwean.
In his vocabulary of cubes and spheres, Sango was able to describe the human condition. His works revealed the inner life of human and natural forms in spheres, ovoids and cubes.
The ingenious artist created works of calm power and perfection which, whilst full of energy,
emotion and feeling, were disciplined by an innate intellect, a natural rhythm, meditative magnetism and precisionist workmanship. Not surprising, his works conformed to strict geometric principles of style and shape known as the “nomos” or artistic laws in Greek aesthetics.
For Brighton Sango, sculpture contained the doctrine that all knowledge can be obtained from impressions of physical sensations. His sensitive sculptures alluded to physical sensations exemplary in his sculpture ‘Feeling Cold’. Emotions such as fear, joy, love and maternal bonding, were distilled and described in stone in pure geometric and organic abstract forms, with enlightenment and balanced judgment.
His focus on abstract subject matter and formalist material qualities found heightened expression in his Afro-cubist artworks where form, context and content depicted a diversity of physical states of the human body such as feeling cold and warmth, to sensory states such as passion, rage and meditation.
His impulsive and resolved use of geometric shapes and cubist-inspired forms related to the optical and psychological senses of the viewer which stirred one’s consciousness.
On my recommendation, the image of Sango’s 1989 sculpture entitled ‘Mother Care’, an abstract art work showing the graceful elegance and rhythmic abstracted shapes of a mother holding her baby, was adopted by Air Zimbabwe for the National carrier’s print advertisement. In a similar vein, Sango’s skyward facing geometric ‘Zimbabwe Bird’ in golden fruit serpentine, a majestic, robust and architectonic sculpture, stood outside the petit salon gallery of cabinet works at Springstone Art Gallery in Avondale – an iconic symbol of modernist Zimbabwean sculpture.
I first drove to meet Sango in 1987. An extremely sociable livewire, with a nervous laugh, he was very proud of his achievements as a stone sculptor and as a young community leader in Guruve. I came to know Brighton Sango by his village nickname ‘Zoto’; I still wonder what it meant. He was a jovial, sensitive person; kind, passionate and highly-strung, qualities which were reflected in his meticulously finished and emotionally-charged sculpture. He was a perceptible artist, acutely conscious of the forces and sensory mechanisms of the human anatomy, and society’s perception of art.
So sensitive was he, that even the botanical flora and animal forms he sculpted were emotionally animated in the abstract cubist forms that he chiseled.
We built a strong bond over the years. Respectful and confident of my critical appreciation, I was often privy to view his new works, prior to public exhibition, and between 1987 and 1995, we spoke a great deal about his work, life and the future of art in Zimbabwe. I was able to record a great deal of his artistic output, concepts and philosophy. Overtime, he bequeathed me a series of various sized sculptures.
Sango was from the Korekore sub-clan of the Shona people, renowned for their artistic prowess. He was born in 1958 in the Mdindo area of Mvurwi in Guruve, northeast of Harare. He came from a large disadvantaged family and as a result, his formal secondary education lasted for only two years.
He began sculpting as a consequence of his contact with the nearby Tengenenge sculpture community. Here, he acquired the basic techniques of sculpture from the late veteran artist Bernard Matemera.
However, Sango felt the need to work alone and develop his own style and therefore stayed for only a few months with his mentor at the Tengenenge Art Community.
On completion of this informal apprenticeship to Matemera, Sango embarked on his own artistic path. As early as 1979 Sango began to make sculptures based on his drawings using abstract shapes and three-dimensional designs. He was an autodidactic artist inspired by nature and the world around him. An Introspective and highly sensitive stone sculptor, Brighton Sango was a master of form and balance.
Through sheer hard work and determination, he rose to fame soon after Independence in 1980, at the age of 22. Believing Harare to be the focal point for most Zimbabwean artists, he moved to the city. Struggling with the urban environment however, he returned to Guruve in 1990, where he lived, created sculpture, assisted and gave alms to his fellow villagers until his untimely death at the age of 37 in 1995.
Dr. Tony Monda holds a PhD in Post-Modern Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA in Post-Colonial Art and Heritage Studies. E-mail: tonym.MONDA@gmail.com
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