Enos Gunja

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Enos Gunja (* 1949 in Guruve , Zimbabwe) is a sculptor in Zimbabwe .

biography

Enos Gunja comes from the people of the Kore-Kore , a tribe of the Shona group; his totem is the lion . After the sixth grade, he worked as a brick cutter and in a team to destroy the tsetse fly . In 1967 he joined the first generation of sculptors in the artist village of Tengenenge . Since 1982 he has worked as a cook at the Guruve Hospital, but devotes every free minute to sculpture. Enos Gunja lives in Guruve, is married and has eight children, some of whom - like his sons Bester and Master - are also professional sculptors.

Style and meaning

The original, gnome-like, hunchbacked, powerfully muscular male bodies, often hiding something behind their backs in touching contrast like a caught child, are full of stories, like the master himself. Enos Gunja enjoys great respect among his Zimbabwean artist colleagues, especially when he is speaks at the work presentations of his friends at the headquarters of the artists' association in Ruwa . Not only is he a sculptor, but also a narrator and poet , as the following poem from February 1997 shows:

"A sculptor's eye"

What an eagle eye!
The eye that doesn't miss anything.
The eye that sees everything our ancestors saw
Hid in that raw stone.
What an X-ray eye!
The eye that penetrates the core of the stone
And make that marvelous sculpture
Which is now visible to our normal eyes.
Oh! What a wonderful eye!
The eye that sees as if the figure were
Wrapped in transparent material.
Oh! What a wonderful eye
A sculptor's eye.

Exhibitions

Enos Gunja is a member of Friends Forever , whose group exhibitions in Vienna, Berlin, Moscow, Barcelona, ​​Helsinki, Washington DC, Atlanta and other capitals have always featured his works.

swell

  • Ben Joosten: Lexicon: Sculptors from Zimbabwe. The first generation. Dodeward, Netherlands; ISBN 90-806629-1-7 (English)
  • Oliver Sultan: Life in Stone. Zimbabwean Sculpture. Birth of a Contemporary Art Form. Harare 1999, ISBN 1-77909-023-4 (English)
  • Celia Winter-Irving: Stone Sculpture in Zimbabwe. Context, content and form. Harare 1991 (English)
  • Anthony and Laura Ponter: Spirits in Stone: The Face of African Art. Sebastopol / California 1992 (English)
  • Jean Kennedy: New Currents, Ancient Rivers. Contemporary African Artists in a generation of Change. Washington DC 1992 (English)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gunja, Enos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Zimbabwean sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Guruve , Zimbabwe