Bernard Matemera was a Zimbabwean sculptor, widely regarded as one of the most important figures of the first generation of Shona sculpture and the symbolic leader of the Tengenenge community. Born in 1946 near Guruve, in the far north of what was then Southern Rhodesia, he was the son of a village headman. He had four years of formal schooling and, like other boys of his community, herded cattle, modelled clay and carved wood.
In 1963 he was working as a contract tractor driver for tobacco farmers at Tengenenge when he met Tom Blomefield, whose land held rich deposits of serpentine stone. By 1966, with international sanctions undermining the tobacco trade, Blomefield turned his farm into a community of working artists, and Matemera was among the first to take up sculpting full-time, alongside Henry Munyaradzi, Sylvester Mubayi, Fanizani Akuda and others.
From the outset his style was entirely his own — massive, deliberately monumental forms blending the human, the animal and the spirit, with distinctive eyes and ears and figures often bearing three toes and three fingers. He remained at Tengenenge throughout the war of independence and was awarded the Award of Honour at the New Delhi Triennale in 1986. He died in March 2002.