Page 29 - Zimbabwe Stone Sculpure 1st Edition

ThE hISTORY
African Art Promotions was established in 1970 and set up in No 2 Park Street in Salisbury (Harare). The first Directors were Arturo Larrondo, from South America, and his Austrian wife Trude, and businessman Roy Guthrie promoted them. Initially the aim of the gallery was to seek out new talent because most of the best sculptors were affiliated to the National Gallery. It was not long though before the best artists came to them and asked them to sell their work. Leading artist Sylvester Mubayi gave them a frank explanation, which was that the National Gallery was at that time very slow in paying them for work they purchased. Sylvester told them the sculptors lived on their earnings and could not wait (sometimes years) to be paid. This situation was exacerbated when McEwen left the National Gallery in 1973 and the emphasis on sculpture faded. This was mainly because the new Director, Professor Brian Bradshaw, who was Head of the School of Fine Art at Rhodes University in South Africa, was not resident and commuted to Salisbury. He therefore did not have the time to devote to the Workshop.
Three years later, the Larrondos left the country and Roy Guthrie moved the gallery to Sinoia Street. Guthrie deserves a great deal of credit for providing a reliable base for the artists and for organising many exhibi- tions overseas to promote them. By this time he was working with artists such as Nicholas Mukomberanwa and Henry Munyaradzi. These two artists in particular always appreciated the support this gallery gave them during this period and remained loyal until their deaths in 2002 and 1998 respectively. The gallery went through a number of name changes from African Art Promotions to the Gallery Shona Sculpture and finally to Chapungu Gallery.
Hard times
The 1970s were bad years for the artists and the sculpture suffered. The Independence War raged on and Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was known then, was a pariah state with little contact with the main international community.
Tom Blomefield sold his farm in 1973 and lived for a time in Harare but he managed to keep Tengenenge going and found places to sell the sculpture. However, at the worst time of the fighting just before Independence in 1980, he was forced to close Tengenege for safety reasons.
 ROY GUTHRIE, PROMOTER OF AFRICAN ART PROMOTIONS, WHICH LATER BECAME GALLERY SHONA SCULPTURE, AND FINALLY CHAPUNGU GALLERY
“[Vukutu] was a rural place where the artists could work without any pressures and where McEwen could maintain some sort of control over the quality.”
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