Homage Malangatana (1936-2011)

The man has just left us, but the reference point he has become will long remain. The life of the brilliant painter, Malangatana Valente Ngwenya, which began on the 6th of June 1936 in the small town of Malatana in the south of Mozambique and which has just ended during a trip to Matosinhos in Portugal on the 5th of January 2011, is a wonder and a hymn to all human beings. From the little jobs he performed as an adolescent to the 'Nucleus of Art' circle, a cradle of artistic revolution, and on to his final condition of a world-renowned artist, this is the history of a fruitful marriage between success and fidelity to his dreams and to those of others. 

Malangatana held his first individual exhibition at the age of 25. The poorest of the poor identified themselves with the characters in his paintings, while others took their hats off to his talent. He fought for beauty and for freedom, becoming a poet, an engraver, a potter, in order to glorify them with his many palettes. From 1964, he spent a year and a half in the prisons of the Portuguese secret police. Since the independence of Mozambique in 1974, his fame has grown ceaselessly, and at the end of his life he is seen as the one of the most brilliant artists of his generation. His first words when The Courier met him last October are themselves a symbol of this great and yet modest man:

“Welcome to my studio, to my life. What I’ve been doing, either voluntarily and involuntarily, is to express life itself. This country is always like a stage. Life here is like a play, a movie. What I put across in my paintings has nothing to do with my intellect but with my inner feelings and what I see: happiness, sadness, the bitterness of life.

Thank you for the comparison with Hieronymus Bosch. What he brought to painting was spirituality and a kind of demonic genius. He communicated that however powerful you are, you are part of what I paint.”