Joseph Ndandarika


Joseph Ndandarika was a Zimbabwean sculptor known for his figurative works.

Early life and education

Ndandarika was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia and grew up in Rusape. He was the son of a Malawian bus driver and a Shona mother. His mother was artistic and occasionally worked as a model for the sculptor Job Kekana, another Rusape resident. After completing primary school, he attended a Catholic boarding school at Serima Mission in the late 1950s. His artistic talent was identified there by Fr John Groeber and Cornelius Manguma, who trained him in drawing and woodcarving. While at Serima he was chosen by Groeber to paint several murals inside St. Mary's church.
After leaving Serima in 1959, he moved to Salisbury and joined Frank McEwen's Workshop School in Harare in 1960. Initially he became one of McEwen's leading painters, specializing in landscapes and witchcraft scenes. Due to McEwen's preference for untrained, pagan artists, Ndandarika hid his training at Serima for many years. He also developed a new persona as having been the grandson of a sangoma, alleging that he had undergone extensive training with him. The height of Ndandarika's painting career came when MoMA acquired his 1962 oil, "Bushmen Running From the Rain." Ndandarika's signature was his mixing of the paints on the canvas rather than the palette, a technique that created a highly uneven surface.

Later life and exhibitions

After several years of painting, Ndandarika was sent by McEwen to train in stone sculpture with Joram Mariga. During the mid-1960s he gradually shifted more and more towards sculpting, and would end up in all of McEwen's major exhibitions that made Zimbabwean stone sculpture famous. Ndandarika's biggest impact may have been convincing McEwen that in Shona mythology, spirits inhabited rock formations. This formulation had a major impact in McEwen's marketing of his sculpture, leading him to claim that his sculptors were unleashing the spirit in the stone in the course of their work. Ndandarika was able to keep selling through the hard times of the 1970s following McEwen's departure from Rhodesia, and during the 1980s Zimbabwean arts revival he was one of the country's most prominent "first generation" sculptors.
One of Ndandarika’s sculptural works, called Telling Secrets, was depicted on a Zimbabwean stamp issued to commemorate Commonwealth Day on 14 March 1983. It formed the 11c value in a set completed with works by Henry Munyaradzi, John Takawira and Nicholas Mukomberanwa.

Selected solo or group exhibitions

Ndandarika was married for a time to the sculptor Locardia Ndandarika, and his children Ronnie Drigo and Virginia Ndandarika are also artists. He also served as a teacher and mentor to a number of artists, including Jonathan Mhondorohuma.