| Johannes Maswanganye |
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BORN: 1949, in the Msengi village near Giyani, Gazankulu Maswanganye was drawn into carving by his father who was a carver of functional objects such as spoons and bowls. Initially Johannes Maswanganye followed his father in making such objects. However, he also carved medicine gourds and traditional medicine containers with carved wooden stoppers. The commission of a Soweto witchdoctor directed Maswanganye to create gourds which he then transformed into carved bodies with removable heads as stoppers. Following the exhibition of these figures on the BMW Tributaries Exhibition in 1985, a wide market opened up which was willing to forget the traditional associations of these figures and to display them as sculptures. Maswanganye has now moved from the medicine gourds to making larger carved sculptures of figures, animals and biblical pieces, frequently ornamenting them with paint.
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
1998 ‘North by Northeast II’ - Group exhibition at Knysna Fine Art, Knysna 1993 Venice Bienalle, Venice, Italy 1993 ‘North by North East’ - Group exhibition at The Everard Read Contemporary Gallery 1991 ‘Town Country’ - Group exhibition at The Everard Read Gallery 1990 ‘Afrika Now’ - Group exhibition at the Sanderling Gallery ‘Art from South Africa’ - Group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford and touring England Group exhibition, South African Association of Arts, Pretoria 1989 ‘Ten Years of Collecting’ - Group exhibition at the University of the Witwatersrand Group exhibition, South African Association of Arts, Pretoria ‘Images of Wood’ - Group exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery ‘Venda’ - Group exhibition at the Sanderling Gallery, Johannesburg 1988 ‘Vita Art Now’ - Group exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery Group exhibition at the FUBA Gallery, Johannesburg ‘Neglected Tradition’ - Group exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery 1987 Solo exhibition at the Market Gallery, Johannesburg ‘South African Sculptures’ - Group exhibition at the Rand Afrikaans University Group exhibition at the Grahamstown Art Festival 1985 ‘BMW Tributaries’ - Group exhibition touring South Africa and West Germany
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
University of South Africa University of the Witwatersrand Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, United Kingdom Johannesburg Art Gallery Africana Museum, Johannesburg South African National Gallery, Cape Town Rotterdam Museum, Holland
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