“Do you wonder if art 'is for you'? Or do you wish that you could give something positive from your heart to Zimbabwe? Or are you a connoisseur and collector of very fine art?

When as an art journalist many years ago, I first saw stone sculpture from Zimbabwe, I simply could not believe that its quality was not a brilliant 'lift' from the work of Brancusi, Modigliani, Picasso and others. Then I investigated further and found that after 500 years of lost tradition, carving the stone of Zimbabwe - a country with a wider variety of hard stone of several colours than anywhere else - had begun again, and was already of world class. And now today a younger generation has taken up this demanding, patient art of carving hard stone (with hand tools . . . ) and brought new imagination to this. From a magnificently proud - and superbly carved - 'Beauty Queen' to caring mothers and their sleepy, secure babies, to the spirits that look over Africa, its people, its animals, its trees and birds and vegetation, this is world-class sculpture - but even more than that, it is art from the heart that touches the heart. This is an enchanting glimpse into the hard work and humanity that lies behind the creation of this work.

I have praised Zimbabwean stone sculpture in the media for many years now, and known it to touch many hearts. I am very happy that I need not take back a single word of that praise. And even happier, that this sculpture has been taken up by the younger generation and has flowered beyond all expectation. Go and give it your support. It is phenomenal - a glimpse of what Africa has to offer the world in this century, which seems to have started so terribly.”

--Art Reviewer Michael Shepherd (Sunday Telegraph) - London, 2005

“But in Africa a great movement is stirring...Something new is happening here, a fresh creative flood that will burst out to give a new dimension to international expression”

--Arts Review, London 1962 (Institute of Contemporary Art exhibit)

“ the exhibition at the Musee Rodin...was a myriad spectacle of form, color,substance and line that filled the viewers with that intangible quality through which nonverbal communication is perceived and received. This was art in its ultimate dimension”

--African Arts, Los Angeles USA 1971 (Musee Rodin exhibit, Paris)

To see the exhibition is to realize that Shona sculpture has come of age and should be better appreciated internationally.”

-- The Times, London 1981

“It is this urge to manifest the connection between the physical world and the world of cause and spirit which takes Shona sculpture into that major league of art and sculpture and humanity’s profoundest
expressions.”

--Sunday Telegraph, London 1983

“These marvellous Shona sculptors from Zimbabwe...speak for Africa, but they also speak for us all; they restore a dignity to art which it is in danger of losing.”

--The Sunday Telegraph, London 1984

“Now that Henry Moore is dead, who is the greatest stonecarver in the
world? In my experience there are three outstanding contenders...and
all three come from Zimbabwe.”

--Art Review, London 1988

“The quality of finish, the style and the concept of the work add up
top the most complete definition of late 20th Century sculpture...clean, sharp creativity produces work which I should call great as well as beautiful.”

--Irish Sunday Independent, Dublin, 1989

“This is the birth of a great national art, capable of speaking about the whole of creation, from personal and family feeling to the world of spirits, soul and self. It is a thrilling adventure of contemporary
art”.

--Arts Review, London 1990 (Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield, England)

“these giant stone sculptures are the most hauntingly evocative images africa in the past century...the greatest contemporary collection of African art ever seen in this country.”

--Evening Standard, London 2000

“This exhibit gently pulls us back to re-examine the source from which most contemporary art has evolved. These Zimbabweans sculptures have gone beyond the roots of mankind to a place which existed before in the heart and essence of the stone.”

--The Globe, Arizona 2002

" The hottest art form out of Africa continues to be the Shona stone carvings from Zimbabwe. Considered to be among the best carvers in the world, the top Shona sculptors have drawn critics' raves at various exhibits in Europe - in London, Frankfurt, Paris, Vienna, Stockholm and the Hague and even America."

-- The New York Newsday - Les Payne

Shona sculpture is perhaps the most important new art form to emerge from Africa in this century.

--Newsweek

...unlike art found in much of the rest of Africa, Shona sculpture...has become a wholly indigenous modern art form created exclusively as a form of artistic expression.

--New York Times

Picasso was an admirer of early Shona sculpture; now evidence is surfacing that he was influenced by it, too.

--Town & Country Magazine

The world's best unrecognized sculptors.

--The Economist

During the past decade, Zimbabwe Shona Sculpture has become the most collected form of African art.It has found its way into important repositories such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Rodin Museum, and into the homes of the Rockefellers and the Prince of Wales.

--The Oregonian

If the perfection of art is measured purely by emotional expressive power, then this art is beyond perfection.

-- West Indian World

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