Silva Dunduro

From the Casa da Cultura da Beira to the national stage

Silva Armando Dunduro was born on 25 February 1964 in the district of Búzi, Sofala province. His painting moves between the figurative and the abstract, dominated by the figure of the woman — a daily warrior for survival. He graduated from the National School of Visual Arts in Maputo in 1986 — among the first generation of painters trained in independent Mozambique —, took a degree in Geography Teaching from the Pedagogical University in Beira (2004), and holds a master's degree in Cultural Heritage and Social Projects from the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, Rio de Janeiro (2010), as a Ford Foundation scholar.

A central figure of the cultural life of central Mozambique, he directed the Provincial House of Culture in Beira from 1987 to 2003 and was a founding member of the Núcleo de Artes Plásticas da Beira (1989), a member of the Núcleo de Arte in Maputo and a founding member of the Associação Cultural Casa do Artista. In 1996 he was named Cultural Personality of the Year by the Diário de Moçambique. He served as Mozambique's Minister of Culture and Tourism from 2015 to 2020.

Between 2008 and 2009 he worked at the Palmar Atelier in Rio de Janeiro alongside the painter Maria do Karmmo. Since 2012 he has taken part in collective exhibitions in Beira, Chimoio, Maputo and Tete, and abroad in Italy, Namibia, Portugal and Sweden. In 2018 he illustrated Na aldeia dos crocodilos (Contos de Moçambique, Editora Kapulana, Brazil).