(3) African Shona Soapstone Hand-Carved Busts. Depicts a family unit, with a balding older male, an older female, and a younger male with similar features and head positions. All signed or marked indistinctly on the undersides. 

Size: 5 x 3 x 6 1/2 in. 

The art of stone carving in Africa goes back many centuries, with the akwanshi (“stone of dead ancestors” in the Ekoi language) monoliths from the Cross River region in Nigeria dating back possibly as early as 300 BC. Central Zimbabwe contains the “Great Dyke,” a source of serpentine rocks of many types including a hard variety locally called springstone that became a particularly sought after material for carvers. An early precolonial culture of Shona peoples settled the high plateau around 900 AD and “Great Zimbabwe,” which dates from about 1250-1450 AD, was a stone-walled town showing evidence in its archaeology of skilled stone working, both aesthetically and functionally. African cultures venerated organic materials, and carved deities, animals, and their fellow tribesmen out of wood, stone, shell, and much more. In 1957 Frank McEwen was appointed as the first curator of the new National Gallery in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe). He had previously been curator at the Musee Rodin in Paris and had links with various artists of the time, including Picasso (himself heavily influenced by African art) and Matisse. McEwen was impressed with the talent of the indigenous artists he met in Zimbabwe, and encouraged them to paint and later to sculpt. Because of his contacts in the international art world, he was able to give the movement that later became known as “Shona sculpture” (after Zimbabwe’s most numerous tribe) its first international exposure. 

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