Malangatana Valente Ngwenya

On 6 June 1936, Mozambican painter and poet Malangatana Valente Ngwenya was born in Matanala, a village in the south of Portuguese Mozambique. He was known for his large canvases and dramatic paintings and was also a sculptor. He frequently exhibited work under his first name alone, as Malangatana. 

At the age of 12, he went to the city of Lourenço Marques (now Maputo) to find work, becoming a ball boy for a tennis club in 1953. This allowed him to resume his education, and he took night classes, through which he developed an interest in art. In 1959, his work was exhibited publicly for the first time as part of a group exhibition, and two years later Malangatana held his first solo exhibition. In 1963, his poetry was published in the journal Black Orpheus and the anthology Modern Poetry from Africa. The following year Malangatana was detained by the Portuguese secret police (PIDE) and spent 18 months in jail. In 1971, he received a grant from the Lisbon-based Gulbenkian Foundation, and studied engraving and ceramics in Portugal. Since 1981 he has worked full-time as an artist.

Malangatana also helped to start a number of cultural institutions in Mozambique, and was a founder of the Mozambican Peace Movement. He was awarded the Nachingwea Medal for his Contribution to Mozambican Culture, and was made a Grande Oficial da Ordem do Infante D. Henrique. In 1997 he was named a UNESCO Artist for Peace and received a Prince Claus Award.

He died at the age of 74, on 5 January 2011, in Matosinhos, northern Portugal and was buried in his native village on 14 January 2011.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Selected publications

Malangatana: Mozambique Modern / Hendrik Folkerts, Felicia Mings, and Constantine Petridis, eds. - Art Institute of Chicago, 2021. The Modern Series at the Art Institute of Chicago.
https://doi.org/10.53269/9780865593138

Locating Malangatana: decolonisation, aesthetics and the roles of an artist in a changing society / Mario De Andrade Pissarra.
University of Cape Town, Department of Sociology, 2019
http://hdl.handle.net/11427/31161

Malangatana: viagem salvadora, where blood and tears run / Memory Holloway.
In: Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies, 2017
https://ojs.lib.umassd.edu/index.php/plcs/article/view/PLCS30_31_Hollowa...

Uma viagem pela vida e a obra de Malangatana Valente: cinema, pintura, literatura / Carmen Lucia Tindó Ribeiro Secco.
In: Revista Cerrados, 25(41), 2016.
https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/cerrados/article/view/25405

Malangatana / Júlio Navarro; Harriet C. McGuire. - Dar es Salaam : Mkuki na Nyota Publishers ; Lisbon : Editorial Caminho, 2003

Contos macuas / Elisa Fuchs; Malangatana. - [S.l.] : Associação dos Amigos da Ilha de Moçambique, 1992

Malangatana: Artist of the Revolution / Elizabeth Ann Schneider.
In: African arts, 1988, Vol.21 (3), p.58-88

See also: Interview  with Malangatana, Maputo, Mozambique, August 2007

Ngwenya, O Crocodilo / um filme de Isabel Noronha.

Timeline of Mozambican sculptors via DBpedia and Wikidata