Thomas Mukarobgwa

Who was Thomas Mukarobgwa?

Thomas Mukarobgwa was a Zimbabwean painter and sculptor who worked as a gallery attendant for much of his career.

Mukarobgwa was born in Nyanga, in the countryside of what was then Rhodesia, and had limited education. He is believed to have taken his first art classes with Ned Paterson at school in Salisbury. With his interest in art piqued he met Frank McEwen, the newly appointed director of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe. McEwen hired him as a gallery attendant and gave him artistic materials, inviting him to join an art school which was then being formed in the basement of the museum. Mukarobgwa thus became one of the original members of what was to become known as the Workshop School. Mukarobgwa acted as a kind of gatekeeper for McEwen, finding young men to join the workshop who fitted into McEwen's preferred profile. In particular, McEwen preferred to have uneducated, pagans who could act as tabula rosa for his artistic training theories. Mukarobgwa seems to have trained those who did not fit this profile to pretend that they did and cover up various aspects of their backgrounds.