Frank McEwen

Frank McEwen was the first Director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia), A man of great credentials in European art circles, knowledgeable about African traditions and religion through his strong interest in traditional African objects, fast gaining popularity as collectors items in Paris and other European capitals in the late l950磗, he was interested in exploring and exposing the black populations potential as artists. Like French art educationist Gustav Moreau McEwen advocated intuitive and innate self-expression in artists rather than art trictly the outcome of formal art education. He found in the black attendants at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe a vast wealth of knowledge about African traditions and religion and the part they had played in the socialization of the African people. He felt that if encouraged these attendants could draw upon this knowledge for imagery in painting and stone sculpture. He thus established a group of artists to be formally known as the National Gallery Workshop School (the sculptors working in a makeshift space in the basement of the Gallery) and giving them rudimentary instruction in painting and sculpture allowed them to express their knowledge of their culture. The descriptive power of painting was well suited to interpretation of myths, folklore and the invention of imagery for abstract concepts associated with African beliefs, The stones were well suited to sculpture depicting subjects - people, for example chiefs and kings, and animals and birds with some kind of traditional spiritual association.

Frank positioned the sculpture as 创contemporary art from Africa创 to appeal to a European public increasingly familiar with and conviced of the art value of the traditional African object, yet caught up in the early throes of modernism, appreciative of the sculpture as object, something of aesthetic value, and intrinsic value for the work of the artist alone.

Frank used his European connections to launch his 创new product创 (remaining firmly convinced that he was part of the impulse behind the artists work) in European art circles, holding exhibitions of the stone sculpture at the Musee d碅rte Moderne and the Musee Rodin in l971/l972, and later exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. These exhibitions were curated to emphasise the individuality of the sculptors rather than being essentially 创group shows创, and soon some of the sculptors became 创names创 in sculpture in Europe.

Frank as much as he was a teacher was a willing pupil, learning much about African traditions from Gallery Attendant Thomas Mukarobgwa on visits to Nyanga in Zimbabwe磗 Eastern Highlands. Some years after his appointment he and his then wife, Mary Harare, in conjunction with William Burdett Coutts, established a 创place创 in Nyanga for sculptors to work, a place in the mind of Frank where they could be close to the natural world with its traditional spiritual leanings and freely able to engage in traditional spiritual practices. This place was Vukuu, a flat area surrounding by rocks, which by an easy stretch of the imagination were shaped like the sculptures that were made there. McEwen also encouraged the late Joram Mariga from Nyanga to sculpt sculptures much tied into his memory of his cultural traditions and folklore and Joram himself encouraged other groups of sculptors, also Agritex workers like himself to do the same.

Frank always saw himself as the 创mind创 behind the stone sculpture and almost the reason for its being. He eschewed the importance of others, Father Broeber of Serima Mission, Canon Paterson of Cyrene Mission, both whom through similar theoretical approaches to art education as Frank, developed traditions of Zimbabwean art which included sculpture, and he also ignored the importance of Tengenenge Sculpture Community as an initiative of Tom Blomefield its Founder Director. While today磗 approach to the history of the stone sculpture and its origins is largely revisionist, apportioning a rightful place for all involved, and in particular the work of Father Broeber and Canon Paterson as more than seminal the strategic place of Frank in that history cannot be over estimated. But Frank磗 stand was not considered 创suitable创 for his time in Rhodesia, so he left the National Gallery, sailed the world in his yacht with his third wife Annie and died at his cottage in Ilfracombe in Decon.

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