John Takawira

The catalogue “Chapungu: Culture and Legend – A Culture in Stone” for the exhibition at Kew Gardens in 2000 depicts John’s sculptures United Family (Springstone, 1987) on p. 24-25 and Rural Mother (Springstone, 1986) on p. 60-61. Both show elements of John's characteristic hollowed-out style that can be considered an extension of his early skeleton figures.

John Takawira (1938 - 8 November 1989) was a Zimbabwean sculptor. The background to the sculptural movement of which he was a leading member is given in the article on Shona art.

Takawira died suddenly in November 1989. His son Gerald Takawira also became a sculptor.

In 1988, one of John's works called Chapungu (a bateleur eagle) was presented to Pope John Paul II.

One of John’s works, called Hornbill Man, was depicted on a Zimbabwean stamp issued to commemorate Commonwealth Day on 14 March 1983. It formed the 30c value in a set completed with works by Henry Munyaradzi, Joseph Ndandarika and Nicholas Mukomberanwa.

John Takawira contributed his sculpture Skeletal Baboon to an exhibition called Arte de Vukutu shown in 1971 at the Musée National d'Art Moderne and in 1972 at the Musée Rodin. These were arranged by McEwen, who had lived and worked in Paris prior to his appointment in Harare. The piece was an enormous success, being called by Charles Ratton the "finest art to emerge from Africa in the twentieth century". Almost immediately Takawira's international reputation was made and he became a full-time professional sculptor.

Takawira developed the skeleton theme that had inspired Sylvester Mubayi, with whom he had worked at Vukutu, and it is a testament to his power as an artist that he was able through these works to express his own feelings about the Shona religion and its beliefs about contact with the spirit world. Some of the pieces from this time are Skeletal Man (1969), Owl Spirit (1977) and He Has Life: Human Skeleton with Baboon Skull, the latter now in the British Museum as part of the McEwen bequest.

At the age of twenty, Takawira was introduced to sculpture by his uncle, the sculptor Joram Mariga. Almost immediately he was noticed by Frank McEwen, the founding director of the new Rhodes National Gallery who invited him to become among the first members of the Workshop School at what is now the National Gallery of Zimbabwe; from 1963 his work was exhibited there. In 1969, McEwen's wife Mary (née McFadden) established Vukutu, a sculptural farm near Inyanga; when the School moved there Takawira followed, becoming one of its most important figures from 1969 until its closure in 1976. In this period pre-independence, the white Rhodesian government saw the Vukutu artists as a politically motivated group and John was at one time arrested for carrying stones, which was seen as a provocation.