Zimbabwe's treasure trove of lost radical art on display in Harare
AA lost treasure trove of paintings from the 1940s are being exhibited in Zimbabwe for the first time in 70 years.
The exhibition features the works of students at Cyrene Mission near Bulawayo, including the one above by Barnabus Chiponza, entitled How Beautiful Is Night.
It was the first mission school to offer art as a subject to young black students at a time when the country was divided along racial lines under colonial rule.
The paintings toured Europe and the US from 1947 until 1953 and were then lost in storage at a church in London. In 1978 they were discovered and later bought by a private collector in the UK.
Now Zimbabweans are able to see The Stars Are Bright exhibition for themselves at the National Gallery in the capital, Harare.
Students were encouraged to paint through their own eyes, rather than to imitate European art, and to connect with their landscapes and reimagine local myths and Biblical narratives as they saw them.
It was a revolutionary concept at the time - when the country was called Southern Rhodesia, after British colonialist Cecil Rhodes, and was under the control of a white minority, with laws that discriminated against black people.
"These pictures speak of hope, they speak of life, they even speak of the future," said Voti Thebe, an expert in Cyrene Mission art.
T"This was 40 years before the country's independence, and there was no segregation at Cyrene Mission."
The students were encouraged to fill the whole canvas with broad brushwork and translate Western Christian themes into distinctive African imagery.
The painting above by Samuel Songo interprets the Bible story of Ananias and Saphira - a couple who died after lying to God when they claimed to have given all the money from the sale of some land to the church, when they had kept some of it for themselves.
Cyrene Mission went on to produce many black artists, scholars, teachers and practitioners.
Scottish clergyman Canon Ned Paterson established the Mission School at Cyrene in 1939. He had studied art in London thanks to an army scholarship - and went on to include art in the curriculum at Cyrene from its inception. Many of the students had disabilities - above Paterson is pictured with Songo, a quadriplegic who went on to teach art for many years.
