A collection of paintings is returning to Zimbabwe for the first time in 70 years.
Young Black students’ paintings from the 1940s and 1950s are on display at the National Gallery in Harare.
They attended Cyrene Mission School, the first institution in Rhodesia at the time that offered art instruction to Black students.
The artists portrayed African life, including dance, household duties, and wildlife hunting, with the rising modern world of railroads and power lines, using bold strokes and vibrant, sumptuous colors that covered the full paintings.
Gift Livingstone Sango is witnessing his father’s picture of Jesus as a Black man for the first time in his life.
“This art being brought back home is what we want, so that when we are long gone, he is already gone, he’s already gone. What about my son, he doesn’t even have son or a child, what about his children? What about the other artists who are coming from Mzilikazi Art Centre or all the arts centres we know, from Mbare from Mabvuku. We are saying they must learn what happens when education was very very little. Look at the paintings how bright they are, they are as bright as they were done 80 years ago,” says Sango.
Sango’s father later developed into a skilled taxidermist who worked at the National Museum in Bulawayo, the nation’s second-largest city.
“The story must be brought back home, the heritage must be brought back home. That is really our story. We are hearing these sentiments that the government is saying they must be brought back. This will dry our tears,” says Sango.
Next to the artwork is a picture of Sango’s father, Livingstone, when he was a young child.
Overall, the paintings show biblical events and African folktales in rich detail, creating an astonishing fusion of African culture, history, and the Christianity brought by European settlers.
As a result, the artworks attracted a lot of fans, including King George VI of Britain, who paid the school a visit in 1947.
For exhibitions in London, Paris, and New York, a selection of the work produced at the Cyrene School between 1940 and 1947 was shipped abroad.
The sale of several paintings contributed to the school’s funding.
Later, after being kept in the basement of St. Michael’s and All Angels Church in London, the paintings fell into disuse.
“This is a collection of lost Zimbabwean artworks from the 1940s from an Anglican Mission School in Cyrene, called the Cyrene Mission School,” says Lisa Masterson, curator and director of art exhibition.
“It was opened and started by a visionary art teacher called Canon Ned Patterson. It is basically the first school in Zimbabwe (then colonial Rhodesia) to offer art as a compulsory subject to young Black students in the 1940s and Ned Patterson was a true believer that art could unite people. And that no matter what people saw in an artwork, it didn’t matter what colour you were, or where you came from or what tribe you were from, art was a unifying factor.”
According to a press release from the exhibition’s organizers, the artworks were unearthed by a Zimbabwean who recognized the name Cyrene on the boxes as the church was being deconsecrated.
Others who recognized they’d stumbled across a treasure trove of art were alerted to the paintings by him.
“The Stars are Bright” exhibition has returned the paintings to the country, where many Zimbabweans will see them for the first time.
Photographs of some of the artists as young boys are displayed alongside the paintings.
“It’s a completion of my history as a Damasane to know the stories that my grandfather would tell through painting, through his artworks,” says Nomashekawazi Damasane, granddaughter of one of the artists.
“It’s also very important for me as an artist, as a creative, to know that our artwork is coming back home, because it allows for people to know that it did not just start now. People started doing art way back. So it’s really important and I’m very pleased and grateful that this artwork is coming back where it belongs, to the people that it belongs to, and us the third and fourth generation of these amazing artists can actually see what our forefathers did before we were born.”
Despite the limitations of Rhodesia, which was governed by a white minority, many Cyrene School graduates went on to become artists, teachers, and professionals.
The pieces were on display at the “The Stars Are Bright” exhibition in 2020 at the Theatre Courtyard Gallery in London.
The entire show has now returned home to praise.
Some believe the Cyrene paintings should permanently return to Zimbabwe in light of the growing clamor for the repatriation of African art to the continent.
The organizers claim that they are in talks with the Curtain Foundation, who hold the collection, about returning the artwork permanently.
The exhibition will run through the end of October.
