The Contemporary Fine Art Gallery Eton: Home

Sculpture

For many years we have been a major UK exhibitor of Shona Sculpture, also called Zimbabwe Sculpture. The term Shona Sculpture is used to describe a movement in art that actually includes many more societies than the Shona. This multi-ethnic dimension means work can vary greatly in its cultural significance, technique and stone textures. In our opinion Shona sculpture represents some of the most spectacular modern African art.

But in Africa a great movement is stirring … Something new is happening here, a fresh creative flood that will burst out to give a new dimension to international expression

Art Reviewer Michael Shepherd (Sunday Telegraph)

the exhibition at the Musee Rodin … was a myriad spectacle of form, color,substance and line that filled the viewers with that intangible quality through which nonverbal communication is perceived and received. This was art in its ultimate dimension

Arts Review, London (Institute of Contemporary Art exhibit)

It is this urge to manifest the connection between the physical world and the world of cause and spirit which takes Shona sculpture into that major league of art and sculpture and humanity's profoundest expressions.

The Times, London

These marvellous Shona sculptors from Zimbabwe … speak for Africa, but they also speak for us all; they restore a dignity to art which it is in danger of losing.

The Sunday Telegraph, London

Now that Henry Moore is dead, who is the greatest stonecarver in the world? In my experience there are three outstanding contenders … and all three come from Zimbabwe.

The Sunday Telegraph, London

The quality of finish, the style and the concept of the work add up top the most complete definition of late 20th Century sculpture … clean, sharp creativity produces work which I should call great as well as beautiful.

Art Review, London

This is the birth of a great national art, capable of speaking about the whole of creation, from personal and family feeling to the world of spirits, soul and self. It is a thrilling adventure of contemporary art.

Irish Sunday Independent, Dublin

these giant stone sculptures are the most hauntingly evocative images Africa in the past century … the greatest contemporary collection of African art ever seen in this country.

Arts Review, London (Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, England)

This exhibit gently pulls us back to re-examine the source from which most contemporary art has evolved. These Zimbabweans sculptures have gone beyond the roots of mankind to a place which existed before in the heart and essence of the stone.

Evening Standard, London

Shona sculpture is perhaps the most important new art form to emerge from Africa in this century.

The New York Newsday - Les Payne

unlike art found in much of the rest of Africa, Shona sculpture … has become a wholly indigenous modern art form created exclusively as a form of artistic expression.

Newsweek

Picasso was an admirer of early Shona sculpture; now evidence is surfacing that he was influenced by it, too.

New York Times

During the past decade, Zimbabwe Shona Sculpture has become the most collected form of African art.It has found its way into important repositories such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Rodin Museum, and into the homes of the Rockefellers and the Prince of Wales.

The Economist