Jackson Hlungwani, one of the country's most celebrated sculptors, has died at the age of 87 in his home in Mbokhota after a long illness. Hlungwani was a self-taught artist who used his complex, personal, spiritual beliefs as a guide for making his work.

Born in 1923 at Nkanyani, Northern Province, Hlungwani was a self-taught artist. The son of a Shangaan migrant worker, he initially travelled to Johannesburg to find work when he came of age. However, after losing a finger in an industrial accident in 1941, he returned home to begin...

Jackson Hlungwani, one of the country's most celebrated sculptors, has died at the age of 87 in his home in Mbokhota after a long illness. Hlungwani was a self-taught artist who used his complex, personal, spiritual beliefs as a guide for making his work.

Born in 1923 at Nkanyani, Northern Province, Hlungwani was a self-taught artist. The son of a Shangaan migrant worker, he initially travelled to Johannesburg to find work when he came of age. However, after losing a finger in an industrial accident in 1941, he returned home to begin carving full-time. At this time, Hlungwani joined the African Zionist Church and was ordained as a minister in 1946, but left shortly afterward to start his own sect, Jerusalem One Christ, in Mbhokota. Here, the artist and his small group of followers began developing their ‘New Jerusalem’ -  an Iron Age site atop a hill - by creating a Great Zimbabwe-like labyrinth of dry packed stone walls.

The acropolis of ‘New Jerusalem’ contained many of the symbols of Hlungwani’s religious views, which borrowed and united Christian and African beliefs. A composite of  opposites – first and last, beginning and end, life and death, entrance and exit, male and female, left and right, good and evil - are expressed in the various thresholds and spaces of the acropolis. However, as an artist, Hlungwani is best known for his carvings depicting fish, which are representative of both the teachings of Christ and the people of the Northern Province: ‘Fish don’t fight, fish are happy, fish teach, I teach’, he proclaimed.

In the 1980s, Hlungwani was ‘discovered’ by the art world and much of his work at ‘New Jerusalem’ was removed to be shown in major national galleries. The Irma Stern Museum, South African National Gallery, University of Cape Town (Department of African Studies), University of South Africa, and University of the Witwatersrand, as well as several international collections, house work by Hlungwani.

‘I think he was unique, at his best, a very fine sculptor who had an extraordinary understanding of the emotional intensity of shapes,’ says Ricky Burnett, who curated Hlungwani’s work in 1985 in Tributaries and the artist’s Retrospective in 1989. In 2004, a documentary of his life and teachings was made by Richard Kruger, who directed and filmed Up, Down, Underdown with Dolphin Mabalane.

Hlungwani is survived by his wife, Mamayila Hlungwani, several children and grandchildren.