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Robert Chimungwe, Product Owner
 


Robert & Son Art Gallery

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ROBERT Kaliyongo Chimungwa’s people originally came from Angola and most of them were artists.

Robert was born in Zimbabwe and moved to South Africa in 1980, the year of that nation’s independence. Now a naturalised South African, Robert is one of his adopted country’s most sought-after carvers, a master of stone and wood whose creations sell for tens of thousands of rands.

As a child, Robert was steeped in art, learning his craft from an uncle who was a master carver of traditional Angolan wooden masks. The young Robert discovered that he had a talent for carving and earned himself a reputation as a top carver of elephants. Back then, he used to create elephants out of ivory. Nowadays, his main media are indigenous redwood and jade and verdite, stunning, multi-hued stones that are quarried near Belfast in the Mpumalanga province which Robert today calls home.

His animals – the Big Five – or whatever creature a particular piece of wood or stone presents to his practised eye, are stunningly lifelike, capturing the essence and inner vitality of the animal. (While he no longer carves ivory, Robert uses kudu horns to make the all-important elephant tusks.)

No two pieces are similar, let alone alike. A visitor to Robert’s ramshackle studio near the Kruger National Park outside White River, Mpumalanga, is shown a set of jade rocks that are as yet untouched by Robert’s pneumatic chisel. “Can you see the elephant?” Robert teases. “Look, here is the head, here the trunk, here the back.” Moving to another stone, he says: “This one, this is a Zulu woman. Look, you can see how she’s turning her head this way.”

Robert’s inspiration comes, he says, from observing. “When I go to a new place I never take photographs; I keep the images in my mind. That’s my skill: not just looking but seeing; seeing who these people are, what they do, what they think, what makes them special.”
As he sets to carve out the inner person or beast only he can see in a stone, it is hard to imagine the rough rock being transformed into a polished, finely worked thing of beauty that will grace a home somewhere in South Africa or, perhaps, in America or Europe. The work is painstaking; a single large piece can take as long as six weeks to perfect.

The 61-year-old acknowledges that he has a following that is both national and international. “My pieces are sold in curio shops and art galleries all over South Africa,” says Robert. “People come to this country and they ask for a Robert Chimungwa. My art has established a reputation and people are prepared to pay high prices for it.

“If people come to South Africa and they buy a Robert Chimungwa they have a memory of this place, a piece of Africa that can belong to them forever. Unless they drop it and break it, it will last a thousand years. And they have an investment. A piece that cost R10,000 ten years ago is worth three or four times as much now.”

Robert is a modest man who, he says, enjoys the fact that his works (they are all individually signed) bring happiness to those who love them. “All I can do when I make something is to try my best but when somebody buys it and says it looks beautiful, then I know that I have succeeded; I know that my work is the best and that makes me happy.”

Robert & Son is a real family business. Son Nicholas has worked for his father since leaving school in 2003. Based in Pretoria, it is Nicholas’s job to market the business and to secure orders. At the White River workshop, Robert’s wife, Promotion, their children and grandchildren play outside while the master carver turns up the radio and tackles the latest creation with his drill. “Yes, I love listening to music while I work. I really enjoy this work; it’s like a hobby to me. Perhaps the best thing about my job is that I learn every day. I never know exactly what I am going to learn that day.”

TEP, Robert says, is “a hit with me”, adding that they have helped his business in a number of ways. These include assistance with producing marketing materials and attendance at specialist art shows. “TEP make sure that people keep looking for me, that they keep looking for my work.”

Robert Chimungwa +2782 704 4097

 
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