Henry Tayali

His painting Destiny, produced while Tayali was still in school, has been described as "an attempt to express the profound thoughts of a serious young man, about the struggles of Mankind now and in the future" and has been exhibited around the world., see also In 1991, it was purchased by the Lechwe Trust, a charity which supports visual artists in Zambia. Tayali had a close association with the Mpapa Gallery, where his works had often been exhibited.

In 1989, over seventy artists from around Zambia convened at Evelyn Hone College of Applied Arts and Sciences, and formed the Zambia National Visual Arts Council (VAC) in his honour - as the national organisation for visual artists to be run by artists in Zambia. They named its headquarters at the Lusaka Showgrounds "The Henry Tayali Visual Art Centre". The Visual Arts Council started its operations in 1991, but the Visual Arts Centre was officially opened later in 1995. It hosts art competitions, exhibitions, and seminars and it is one of the must-sees on the Zambian tourist circuit. The Ngoma Awards, sponsored by the National Arts Council of Zambia confers the "Henry Tayali Award" for Best Two-Dimensional Visual Artist.

Tayali died on 22 July 1987 while visiting his eldest son and family friends the Moiks / Moik-Becker in Aachen, West Germany, after attending his youngest brother's wedding in Southampton, England. He was buried at Leopards Hill Cemetery in Lusaka.

When the family was in Bulawayo, Tayali's natural talent was spotted early on by Alex Lambeth, who ran the African Affairs Department of Bulawayo City Council. Lambeth encouraged Tayali to pursue art as a career, and enrolled him on an artwork course. This led to Henry's first exhibition in Bulawayo at the age of fifteen. His painting career took off after that, and using water colours, Tayali begun to produce varied, vibrant, dynamic works such as Sunset Road and Destiny. He also produced sculptures - amongst them The Graduate at the University of Zambia campus in Lusaka, as well as silk-screens and woodcuts, a few of these were printed as greeting cards and sold through newsagents and book stores. Tayali held exhibitions in Lusaka, Bulawayo, Aachen, Düsseldorf, London (Commonwealth Institute, 1983), Alberta, and Toronto as well as in Zambia, where a few of his exhibitions were opened by Kenneth Kaunda, the first President of Zambia. He was associated with artists, authors and politicians, including Simon and Cynthia Zukas, Andrew Sardanis (whose property at Chaminuka houses a collection of Tayali's paintings and sculptures amongst others) and American Professor Melvin Edwards at home and abroad, many of them becoming lifelong friends. There were also joint exhibitions and support, such as that provided by the Alliance Francaise.

Writing in 1980, the American academic Bob Barde placed Tayali's woodcut prints on a par with Europe's great printmakers such as Käthe Kollwitz and Théodore Géricault. Tayali's woodcut subjects were usually about the common African man (and woman), and the feelings evoked by his daily travails, and the prevailing political landscape of the times. Barde described his prints as "powerful" and said that he "seems destined to play an important role in modern African art."

Speaking of his work in 1979, Tayali said, "My art is concerned with the suffering of the people and I want it to be the echo of that suffering. I see the problems of the continent... I am just recording what I and my people feel, but I do not attempt to provide answers to our problems ".

In early 1978, Tayali returned to West Germany to embark on a Doctor of Fine Arts degree at the Akademie für Bildende Künste, but the arrangements did not work out and he returned to Zambia bitterly disappointed.

Other work included efforts to establish a School of Fine Arts in Zambia and numerous field trips within Zambia to record and preserve the arts and cultures of the various tribes for posterity - including audio recordings. He was involved in organising the attendance - and was part - of the Zambian delegation at the Second African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos, Nigeria, 1977 (FESTAC'77).

From a young age, Tayali had always been interested in sculptures and modelling - and he went on to produce sculptures such as The Graduate seen here on the banner of the University of Zambia web-page, at the UNZA Great East Road campus. Funded by donations from the Zambia State Lottery, the Anglo-American Corporation and some individuals, it depicts a graduating student in his flowing gown and mortar board hat, the book in his left hand signifying progress through learning in the modern world, and the hoe in the right hand the hard work and progress through agriculture that has underpinned the country in general. He also produced a huge sculpture of a bird (work in concrete) at the Kapiri Mposhi railway station - the terminus end of the mid-seventies Chinese built Tazara (TAnzania ZAmbia RAilway) railway, whose other end is in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania's capital on the Indian Ocean coast. From about 1976, he started working with welded metal sculptures. Initially these were fairly simple as he was new to the medium and its techniques, but by the time of his death they had a majestic complexity to them - probably the most famous example is The Bull, which was mounted on the road to Lusaka International Airport.

After graduating in 1975, and fluent in German (in addition to English, Bemba, Ndebele, and Ngoni), he returned to Lusaka to the Institute of African Studies.

In 1971, he married Regina Mary Birungi Kivubiro while still in Uganda, and just before returning to Zambia and they had a son in 1972, Rhodrick Tayali. Regina died in 1976. Tayali had a daughter in 1980, Katwishi Alanda Tayali, followed in 1983 by a son, Chaswe Angio Tayali, with Rosemary Kaluwa, whom he later married. Tayali's son Rhodrick is an object and interior designer - Diploma-Designer (FH) - by training and a graduate of the Fachhochschule Aachen, and is also an accomplished artist in his own right.

In early 1967, before his Cambridge 'O' Level Certificate results came out, Tayali left Rhodesia (the Southern was dropped when Zambia gained independence in 1964) for Zambia, and applied for a bursary from the Zambian Government - expressing an interest in Architecture with Art. With help from his father (who went to school at Lubwa Mission in Chinsali in Northern Rhodesia with the likes of Kenneth Kaunda (President of Zambia 1964–1991), Simon Kapwepwe (Vice President 1967–1970), and Wesley Nyirenda and others, and who lobbied the Ministry of Education at Ridgeway in Lusaka on his behalf), he was awarded a Zambian Government scholarship to study at Uganda's Makerere University in Kampala, where he graduated in 1971 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. Shortly after Idi Amin seized power in Uganda, Tayali returned to Zambia and then started work at the University of Zambia where he joined the Institute of African Studies in Lusaka as a lecturer in African art and later as University Artist. In 1972, Tayali got a German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) scholarship to study for a Masters in Fine Arts at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, West Germany. Tayali was the first recipient of the DAAD to be selected from south of the equator.

Tayali first started painting while at school in Bulawayo in the late 1950s. He attended secondary school in Bulawayo at Mpopoma High School and during this time produced the work Destiny. The proceeds from the sale of his paintings were held in the Henry Tayali Painting Fund, administered by Trustees who included Eric Gargett and E. H. Ashton. The money in the Fund would be released when Henry was accepted at University (see also).

As a young man, Tayali had started his painting using water colours, producing works of great detail, vividness and vibrancy - his depiction of human figures similar in style to the Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo (e.g. his watercolours held at the US National Archive: see External Links below) - before progressing to oil paintings. His paintings evolved from the fine art style of the late 1950s/1960s/early 1970s, to semi-abstract, through to abstract, and then edging to minimalism at the time of his death. His paintings were distinctive, blending African and Western styles, reflecting the influences on his life.

Henry Nkole Tayali (22 November 1943 – 22 July 1987) was a multi-lingual Zambian painter, sculptor, printmaker, raconteur and lecturer. He has been described as Zambia's most famous painter.

Tayali was born on 22 November 1943 to Edward Nkole Tayali (1914–1995) and Esnati Mumba Tayali (née Chola, 1923–1963) in Serenje in the British Colony of Northern Rhodesia (later to become Zambia), a town near the site of the Nsalu 12,000-year-old rock and cave paintings. His father, the first born of five children, had won a scholarship to study at a South African University, but never took it up because his own mother died suddenly, and he chose to stay and look after his younger siblings. In order to support them, Tayali's father emigrated from Northern Rhodesia to work in Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia, ending up in the Department of Housing and Amenities.