Bertina Lopes: a militant with a brush

Abstract

This paper seeks to reclaim visual artist Bertina Lopes (Maputo, 11 July 1924 - Rome, 10 February 2012) and her muted presence and indirect participation in the nationalist fraternity of Mozambique of the 1950s and 1960s. On examining certain alliances, particularly her co-authorship as illustrator of the first edition of Luís Bernando Honwana's Nós Matámos o Cão-Tinhoso (We Killed the Mangy Dog), 1964, I consider and seek to redress Lopes's tacit experience of colonial racism, which arguably drove her unflinching anti-colonial militancy with a brush. In this, I posit that Lopes be considered a founding figure in a women's genealogy of African modernist achievement.