AfricanColours - Women Are Stronger Than Men

Zimbabwe Thu 01-11-2007

Women Are Stronger Than Men - Takawira's Sculptures
By Stephen Garan’anga

A solo exhibition titled “Women are stronger than men” by Lazarus Takawira is the sculptor’s way of thanking his mother and his wife for inspiring him.

Most of his works are founded on genuine respect and appreciation for women whom he says are behind every successful man.

Takawira also says women are every man’s mother, that Jesus Christ was born of a woman are considered stronger all men should respect their wives and women in general.

Lazarus Takawira is currently showing his work at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare probably for the last time in a local public space as he intends to go private.

“All men should respect their wives and women in general. My sculptures are praise and poems to women, women I have known especially my mother Amai Takawira and my wife.

My sculptures speak for themselves. The stone is the voice and I remain silent. Every stone is a sculpture. The only thing that is needed is removed the dirty parts”. said Lazarus Takawira.

But his mother, a sculpture herself inspired this exhibition which Takawira says is his inspired this last because he intends to work privately.

Born and bred in Nyanga, Takawira was also tutored by his late brother John and Bernard who were internationally renowned sculptors.

Today Lazarus Takawira is best seen as a sculptor of the “old school” yet with outlook of a younger man raising in his sculptures gender issues, social issues and land issue.

In his work he speaks like a sage, yet is as ardent and impassioned as a young socially committed artist. The monumentality and grandeur of his work is that of his forebears, his brothers John and Bernard, the late Nicolas Mukmomberanwa, the late Bernard Matemera, the late Joram Mariga, and similarly his work has its own character individuality and impact.

But always his sculptures make their point and hit home, and he never sculpts for the sake of sculpting.

Lazarus Takawira is a master of the human figure in stone as were Michelangelo, Donatello and in particular Bernini who prized the shape and form of the figure from marble, turned the fingers of Daphne into the branches of a tree and in his sculpture “ the Ecstacy of St Theresa”, pinpointed the source of St Theresa’s ecstacy.

Takawira’s sculptures are as high pitched as Bernini’s, laden with raw emotion they play on feelings and bring about both pleasure and pain.

Lazarus Takawira’s most telling sculptures are of women both “taken” from life, and figures and figment of his imagination. His faces mirror the faces of the Beautiful Style of the Bohemian Gothic as represented in the sculpture and painting of what is now the Czech Republic, the Krumlov Madonna C1400 and the St Vitus Madonna end C14, their heavy lidded eyes filled with the secret pride of motherhood, faces surrounded by masses and the volumes of hair, making them seem smaller and more delicate of feature than they actually are.

Doreen Sibanda, the Gallery’s executive director said women are at the heart of Takawira’s art and life. “Takawira work mainly in springstone, an exceptionally hard and heavy stone which he gives a beautiful finish. Women are at the heart of his arts and life. His wife is his muse and his mother was, throughout her life, his mentor. His understanding of women goes far beyond their physical form to their actual substance.

“Not only are his stones reflections of his belief that women are emotionally and spiritually superior to men, they seek to explore the embodiment of what it is to be African. “This comes to the fore for examples example in works that fuse aspects of African mythology with female form such a water spirit,” Sidanda said.

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