Background
Munyaradzi was the son of a mhondoro, one of the traditional spiritual leaders of his community in Chipuriro (Sipolilo Tribal Trust land) about 30 km from Guruve, Mashonaland in the far north of what was, in 1931, Southern Rhodesia. He participated as a child in the traditional ceremonies such as the bira, a type of funeral procession, and in hunting.
Education
A Shona speaker, Munyaradzi never attended school, and struggled with the English language throughout his life. Henry was brought up by his uncle, Edward Chiwawa, who was a local carpenter; his education was practical and first-hand. He was influenced by a local itinerant Christian preacher, Mukaera, whose Apostolic Church he joined and he learned to read the Bible in Shona. Eventually he became village blacksmith, and also worked as a carpenter and tobacco grader.
Career
One of Henry’s works, called Wing Woman, was depicted on a Zimbabwean stamp issued to commemorate Commonwealth Day on 14 March 1983. It formed the 9c value in a set completed with works by Joseph Ndandarika, John Takawira and Nicholas Mukomberanwa. The stamp carries the name “Henry Mudzengerere”! Another, called Spirit Python was the 30c value in a set issued on 14 April 1988 to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of the opening of the National Gallery.
Munyaradzi derived his subject matter from the natural world, combining it with Christian imagery and depicting it in an unusual, deeply personal fashion. Celia Winter-Irving, in her book on Stone Sculpture (see Further Reading) wrote “Like Paul Klee, Henry takes a line for a walk but he reins it in after the first steps”. The evolution of his style and its connection to European sculpture is discussed by Jonathan Zilberg.
Munyaradzi’s sculptures are in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, the Chapungu Sculpture Park, the Museum fur Völkerkunde, Frankfurt, the Indianapolis Museum of Art,[6] the McEwen collection of the British Museum,[7] and many others. Most include human or animal faces in which the eyes are carved as simple circles and the eyebrows and nose are cut with straight lines in a T shape. Some of his exhibition pieces, such as Saviour and Child (1989), have toured worldwide; for example to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in 1990,[8] where the works on display included examples from all the artists who had contributed to the 1971 Musée Rodin exhibition.
The catalogue “Chapungu: Culture and Legend – A Culture in Stone” for the exhibition at Kew Gardens in 2000 depicts Henry’s sculptures Mhondoro – Great Lion Spirit (Springstone, 1986) on p. 48-59 and The Spirit Medium and the Interpreter (Springstone, 1995) on p. 84-85. Images of Munyaradzi’s work are easily found on the World Wide Web, for example from the Richard Handelsman’s collection where Prayer for the rain (203 cm high) is typical.
Some of Munyaradzi’s early sculptures were signed by him the name "Enri", for example for the exhibition Arte de Vukutu, but most had the name "HENRY" chiselled in capital letters and many have commanded relatively high prices on the international market. For that reason, forgeries are known to exist. He used several types of serpentine (e.g. springstone, green and red serpentine) and the rarer semi-precious stone verdite for his sculptures. As remarked by Olivier Sultan