Artist: Arthur Azevedo

Arthur Azevedo was born in Zimbabwe in 1935. Between 1950 and 1954 he trained as a teacher at St Augustine’s College, Cape Town, and then returned to Harare to teach at St Louis Mountbatten School. In 1956 he went to Rome with the intention of becoming a Roman Catholic priest and for six years he studied philosophy and theology at the Pontifical Urban University ‘de Propaganda Fide’. His interest in art, at that time, was confined to painting and for a short period he studied under Gustovo Solimene, a painter with leanings towards the Neopolitan School. During his vacations he roamed and painted in the Castelli Romani and Alban Hills region. Returning to Zimbabwe in 1962, having abandoned his intention of becoming a priest, he settled in Harare and took up teaching at St John’s School, where he continues to teach today. His interest in sculpture began in 1963 as a result of his dissatisfaction and lack of fulfilment as a painter. Scrap and found iron and steel were chosen mostly by chance and soon became his dominant medium. He developed his style and techniques in metal sculpture alone. His progress was stimulated, in the early days, by the Annual Exhibitions of the National Gallery, the Weld Art Sculpture Competitions and commissions by architects, notably Tony Wales-Smith, who provided the first challenge to use this medium in architecture. Married with three children, he lives in Harare.

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