Mozambican artists

Mozambique's modern art grew up in Lourenço Marques, today's Maputo, in the last decades of Portuguese colonial rule, and its leading artists were bound up with the struggle for independence, won in 1975. The painter Malangatana became the best known, with crowded, visionary canvases and murals; the sculptor Alberto Chissano carved wood and stone; Bertina Lopes, who later worked in Rome, painted bold, colourful figures; and Ricardo Rangel was a pioneer of photojournalism in the country.

In the north, the Makonde have a long tradition of carving in wood, and the potter and sculptor Reinata Sadimba has made it her own. After the civil war, Gonçalo Mabunda began turning decommissioned weapons into thrones and masks. These are Mozambique's artists, most looked-up first. See also Makonde art and Southern Africa.