Arthur Fata was born in 1963 in Harare and studied at the B.A.T.Workshop (at Harare's National Gallery) where he was able to usepainting, print making and textiles as well as sculpture to expresshis ideas. Here he was introduced to the work of renowned artistssuch as Picasso and Matisse. " To me it was a great excitement todiscover the work of these people - especially to see work that couldcome from 'within' a person, particularly in abstract art". This newand powerful imagery inspired Arthur rather than directly influencingwhat he was doing : he felt able to work differently but fired by thesame concepts. After his time at the Workshop he was awarded ascholarship to study fine art in Bulgaria. He has also studied inEngland and Portugal. It was at an artists' workshop that in Portugalthat he was first able to use machine tools on stone and he nowbelieves that these should be available to all Zimbabwean stonesculptors . Interestingly, he does not feel that such methods poseany threat to their work so long as they see the process simply as atool and resist getting to involved in the technique. In his opinion,there will always be a place for hand tools as there are many aspectsof stone sculpture for which machinery is not suitable.

 

Arthur's sculpture is derived from powerful natural forms, such asrock formations and cliffs - but also from smaller subject mattersuch as birds and plants. His ideas evolve through a process ofdrawing, with imagery often becoming abstracted and sometimescombined with other images to create startling concepts - forexample, Torso (1992, Serpentine and Wire) which shows a human figurepartially wrapped in metal wire. This combines a traditional stonedepiction of the human form with images seen of spiders wrappingtheir webs around the roots and stems of water plant. He uses drawingnot just for his sculpture but also as an activity in its own right(landscapes, e.t.c, which sometimes develop into painting). He willthen take ideas from his painting to use in sculpture as well asworking from photographic collages for subject matter. He explainsthat the most satisfying aspect of his work is the process of "building or subtracting mass. The space is used and the volume iscontrolled". Always looking for new ways of achieving this, his workoften demands combinations of unusual materials and a highlyimaginative method of using them to their best effect.

 

The stones favoured by Arthur Fata include the various Serpentinesand Springstone, When working in this country; in Bulgaria he usesMarble and Granite which is harder than Zimbabwean stone, but israrely available in large pieces. He says of his work, " I try to putmore ideas into each piece - so each sculpture is new. But you have acollection of images to call on as memories of your experiences." Forthe future?. " I wish I could carve a huge sculpture, but this wouldtake a mountain ! It would be a massive sculpture in which peoplecould live".

 

Now thought of as one of the most innovative of the new generationof sculptors, his work has been seen in several importantinternational exhibitions as well as in Zimbabwe. His major 1995 work"Wild Seedpod" has been much admired and considered one of the mostsignificant of recent years.