RICHARD ROSANI
Born in 1967, Harare, Zimbabwe

Richard Rosani has emerged from the tutelage of the late Nicholas Mukomberanwa as a sculptor with decided ideas about originality, and a sense of the ?sculptor? in any sculpture which is made in stone in Zimbabwe. He feels there is a mutual ground upon which the natural structure, shape and form of the stone, and the sculptor?s mind and ideas should meet. It is he feels, far better to learn about sculpture from the stone than from the work of another sculptor.
As a young man be broke through the social and cultural barriers in Zimbabwe to art becoming a profession rather than a plaything or? child?s toy?, and after commencing a teaching career began to study and make sculpture in a group of sculptors established by Sister Catherine of the Catholic Church in Harare. He then met and worked with the late Nicholas Mukomberanwa. He has exhibited abroad and has enjoyed the patronage of German art collector Jurgen Blenck.
Today, Rosani prefers to work from his own, alone with his stones, making minute and provocative exploration of the female figure in stone. There is one sculpture which shows a female figure from the feet to the waist, with somewhat erotic emphasis on the buttocks and where they meet. How this sculpture is seen dependent on the viewer, but there is some kind of double entendre within the work.
Richard Rosani has ambitions as a sculptor as much as a sculptor who comes from Zimbabwe. He has tasted the international experience and found it sweet and to his liking. He realizes that for that experience to continue to be savored that he must compete not only with sculptors from Zimbabwe working in stone, but sculptors from the world over working in all manner of materials. He also realizes that despite his success, he must continually challenge his own standards. To the average eye his work is sophisticated, he does not shy away from the explicit, the erotic or the plainly sexual in his sculptures.
Perhaps the future of the stone sculpture in Zimbabwe lies in the hands of sculptors such as Richard Rosani, who takes a stone and dares to say with it what he will, to do with it what he will. His concern as a sculptor is not to crush or annihilate the ideas provided for him by the stone, but to incorporate them, to blend them with his own and see what comes out. We need sculptors such as Rosani, making their way as sculptors, moving away from any kind of dependency on what has gone on in the past, creating their own future for their tradition.