Abstract Shona sculpture - Van Dusen Gardens, Vancouver photo Lorna flickr The emergence of Shona sculpture: Shona sculpture has been accepted as one of the most important art movements to emerge from Africa in the twentieth century, successfully combining traditional artistic beliefs with contemporary styles. The nascent 'Shona sculpture movement', which began in the fifties, has grown to be regarded as an art renaissance, as it had evolved, without hardly any sculptural heritage, into an art genre displaying vigor, spontaneity and originality in an area of Africa previously dismissed as artistically barren in the visual arts.