Gutsa: Artist of great repute

When you have practiced art for more than three decades, you build a reputation based on the capacity to produce engaging artwork, start becoming a contributor to the creative conscience of a society and inspire not only a generation, but countless futures of people who heed the call to be an artist.

Enter the artist whose reputation often proceeds him, Tapfuma Gutsa.

When one discusses art in Zimbabwe, a recollection of painters and most noteworthy, a number of names from the Stone Sculpture movement are often referred to. The Nicholas Mukomberanwas and Bernard Matemeras come out tops in the minds of the art loving public and for a second generation sculptor to garner acclaim as his predecessors, Gutsa remains one of the aesthetically and culturally relevant artists of our time.

Gutsa has been acknowledged not only locally, but in regional and global circles as an avant-garde artist. Gutsa innovated by shifting from the traditional practice in stone by infusing wood and metal into his sculptural practice.

This was at that time viewed with an air of scepticism, some would argue that it was an abandonment of what had become, to some extent, a cultic practice where certain rules were to be adhered to in order to create what was genuinely “Shona” Sculpture.

Others, however, saw the shift from a heavily modern concept of guild work being taken to a different, intellectually charged setting that was expressive of the artist in his Contemporary stimulus.

Hwange, (1994) which is housed in the National Gallery of Zimbabwe’s Permanent Collection, is a work that reflects on the fragile and ephemeral nature of humanity, it draws its energy from an event which is deeply etched on the collective Zimbabwean soul.

Hwange is monumental in its form as it presents a story; The loss of 426 lives at what was then called Wankie Coal Mine, marked one of the greatest disaster the country has ever experienced.

With a majority of the miners who perished being left in the shafts, largely due to the Smith Government’s lax response to the crisis.

Gutsa’s Hwange is an installation that merges the elements of that tragedy with the viewer seeing the piece as a cross section of a coffin. All objects being in place; on the floor is a pile of coal that forms the base of the work, a hooked chain is placed on top of these coals.

At the second level, two miner’s helmets are lain on a hexagonal base, underneath a second hexagonal sheet that forms the third level, on which lies a phantom object wrapped in a shroud.

The morbidity of the work is tense, the fate of the miners is finite by all measures, however, as the work implies, at the hands of men. The countenance of blood-guilt is prevalent in the corpses presence at the very top of the artwork.

Hwange a summarily presented detail of an event that was almost forgotten.

Tapfuma Gutsa was educated by Cornelius Manguma, one of the progenitors of the Sculpture movement in Zimbabwe , at Driefontein Mission School where another one of his instructors there was Nicholas Mukomberanwa.

If any parallels are to be drawn between Gutsa and another thinker, Isaac Newton comes to mind for his statement; “If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”

Gutsa, having seen further and having become a giant himself places his efforts and attention to lending his shoulder to future artists. Over the past five years he has operated an open studio that functions in an atelier style.

He now mentors young students in art and also continues to create work for exhibition here and abroad.

Tapfuma Gutsa is set exhibit at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe in Harare later this year. This solo exhibition will feature new works from the artist in the form of graphics, paintings and sculpture.