Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Xipamanine neighbourhood in Maputo city lost one its stars, and Mozambique one of its brightest when, at around 5:00 p.m. on Monday, September 13, the renowned Mozambican artist Mankew passed away.
The death of Mankew Valente Mahumana, aged 87, was announced by the family.
“Rest in peace, father!” his son Albino Mahumana, a photo reporter and also a visual artist, wrote on Facebook.
Sources close to the family said that the artist had not been in good health the last few years. He had lost his sight, and was shaken by two recent misfortunes – the death of his wife and a son.
A renowned figure at the Maputo ‘Núcleo de Arte’, Mankew belongs to the generation of artists and nationalists which included Malangatana, Oblino Mabjaia, Chissano, Shikani and Lindo Hlongo.
Born on January 1, 1934, in Matalana, Marracuene district, Maputo province, southern Mozambique, Mankew worked in the mines in South Africa for most of the 1950s, before starting his artistic career in 1965.
Realist
Self-taught, like most artists of his time, Mankew first exhibited collectively – in 1968. His first solo exhibition was in 1973, in the former Lourenço Marques, now Maputo.
About this early phase, Mankew said, in a 1984 interview with weekly Domingo: “My brushes denounced the slavery that my people suffered.”
After independence in 1975, Mankew continued to paint, inspired by the lives of those close to him, the struggles of his people, and what he saw around him.
“I paint with the same naturalness that I breathe the air, because I am and I have always been a realist artist,” Mankew said in the Domingo interview.
Mankew “insinuated himself into the usurped space to talk about those close to him. Discreet, without great indignant rhetoric, an almost monotony of colours. The emphasis was on his world,” writes Mozambican author Luís Carlos Patraquim in ‘Com as Mãos – 24 Artistas Moçambicanos’ [“With the hands – 24 Mozambican artists’], a multi-author book with photos by Luís Abélard.
Over his 60-year career, Mankew saw his works exhibited in Mozambique, Portugal, England, Norway and Germany, among others countries.
