Colleen Madamombe

Colleen Madamombe

(1964 - 2009) was a Zimbabwean sculptor working primarily in stone. Her work expresses themes of womanhood, motherhood, and tribal Matriarchy

Colleen Madamombe was born in 1964 in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe following independence in 1980) and received her secondary education at school in Kutama, between 1979 and 1984. She obtained a Diploma in Fine Arts at the BAT Workshop School of the National Gallery of Zimbabwe from 1985 to 1986. In 1986 she married the Zimbabwean sculptor Fabian Madamombe, with whom she later had seven children. Initially, she specialized in drawing and painting but in 1987 she went to help her husband in his sculpting at Chapungu Sculpture Park where she started stone carving. Colleen became close friends with fellow female sculptor, Agnes Nyanhongo, and rapidly developed her own style of sculpting in the three years she stayed full-time at Chapungu.