Malangatana Valente Ngwenya (Mozambican, 1936-2011)


'A mulher que vai ao espelho e não se vê' (The woman who goes to the mirror and does not see her face) signed and dated 'Malangatana 93/94' (lower right); inscribed ''A mulher que vai ao espelho e não se vê/ Problemas de Guerre Renamo' (verso) oil on canvas140 x 120cm (55 1/8 x 47 1/4in).
|Malangatana was born in Matalana, a village near Marracuene. As a child he divided his time between herding cattle and attending the local mission school, before finding employment as an empregado at a country club in the capital Maputo. One of the members, Augusto Cabral, befriended Malangatana and encouraged his artistic inclinations, buying materials so he could attend art lessons at night school.In 1958, Malangatana attended an exhibition of a local art collective, Nucleo de Arte. This inspired him to show his own work, and he held his first exhibition the following year.Malangatana, like many of his artistic contemporaries, was opposed to the Portuguese colonial government, and joined the nationalist movement FRELIMO (the Front for Liberation of Mozambique). In 1964, he was detained by the PIDE, the Portuguese secret police and imprisoned for two years. This time was to have a profound effect on the artworks he later produced. Post independence, he served as a FRELIMO deputy for four years and later served as a member of the Maputo Municipal Assembly.On Malanganta's death in 2011, the critic H. Cotter commented that the violence and punishment the artist experienced in these years continued to haunt him until the end of his life:"Densely packed with figures, (his paintings) presented lurid, Boschian visions of the Last Judgement and the torments of hell rooted in images related to healing and witchcraft remembered from childhood."BibliographyH. Cotter, 'Malangatana Ngwenya, Mozambican Painter and Poet, Dies at 74', The New York Times, 8 January 2011.