Artist – Ephraim Chaurika (*1940 Guruve district/mashonaland)
Title – „bird“
Object – sculpture, est. before 1985, size 33,0 cm, weight 7,9 kg (12,9 inch, weight 17,1 lbs)
signed on the bottom, serpentine rock
Provenience – bought via auction from a private european collection
copyright for this picture (owned by www.a-private-collection.com)
Ephraim Chaurika was born in 1940 in the Guruve District / Mashonaland.
He learned the craft of a watchmaker after school and worked as a watchmaker and shepherd until 1966 when he became a sculptor. But early on he joined the artist community in Tengenenge and since then lives with his wife Edina (2 children: daughter Tebi 1968, son Anthony 1972) in Guruve.
In his early sculptures he engraved forms of clock springs and gears as decorative ornaments. Ephraim Chaurika was one of ten Tengenenge sculptors who first participated in 1966 at the Annual Art Exhibition in the National Gallery. He also engraved printing stones. One of them is in the collection of the „Museum of World Cultures“ in Frankfurt (germany). In an interview with Chantal Goossens in 1997, Ephraim told Chaurika that his first work sold was a turtle. His work is represented in cultural/ ethnological museums and collections all over the world
