MALANGATANA NGWENYA | MATALANA

Private Collection, USA

Malangatana was born to a poor family in the rural village of Matalana in southern Portuguese Mozambique. His father was a mine worker in South Africa and was mostly absent, so as a child he helped his mother, a traditional healer, teeth sharpener and tattooist, to make ends meet by herding animals on farms. His childhood fascination with his mother’s work is echoed in the teeth and claws that populate his mature art. Painted at the height of the Mozambican War of Independence (1964–1974), the female figure in this rare early painting may have been inspired by the artist’s mother, and hints at the suffering and hardship endured by ordinary people under the oppressive colonial rule.