# Malangatana artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/malangatana/
Profile generated: 2026-08-24T17:02:09.906Z
Quality: medium confidence, adequate sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1936-06-01
- Death date: 2011-01-05
- Nationality: Mozambican
- Common media: Painting

## Portrait

![Malangatana](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ae/Malangatana_Ngwenya.JPG/1280px-Malangatana_Ngwenya.JPG)
Bunks · CC BY-SA 3.0
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Malangatana_Ngwenya.JPG

## About Malangatana

Malangatana Valente Ngwenya (1936–2011), widely known simply as Malangatana, was a Mozambican painter and poet. Authority records preserve several forms of his full name, while Tate catalogs him as Malangatana Ngwenya. His use of a single name is important for entity matching because publications, collections, and sale records may index him differently. Painting is the clearest visual-art medium established by the collected institutional sources. The source pack also documents his work as a poet, but it does not provide enough museum-level detail to assign a specific movement, recurring subject, or formal series. Collectors may therefore encounter his work under either the mononym or the full name, particularly in painting and auction-record contexts. Appraisily treats these name variants as one artist entity while avoiding unsupported stylistic, attribution, or market claims.

## Common works and media

Paintings are the best-supported visual works in the collected sources. Poetry is also part of Malangatana's documented activity, while sculpture appears only in a lower-priority discovery source and is not presented here as a common market category. The pack does not establish recurring subjects, named series, print editions, ceramics, posters, or a broader medium catalogue. Auction and appraisal records should retain the medium stated for the specific object rather than infer one from the artist's name alone.

## Market and appraisal context

Appraisal of a work catalogued as Malangatana should begin by resolving the artist name against the full form Malangatana Valente Ngwenya and authority records for the Mozambican painter born in 1936. The collected pack confirms public auction-price coverage on Appraisily but does not contain lot-level descriptions, realized prices, dimensions, dates, condition notes, provenance, or edition information. Those details must come from the specific object and its documented sale history rather than being inferred from this biography. When comparable records are available, compare works with relevant shared characteristics and treat this source pack as identity evidence, not as a price forecast or authentication.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine public artist-identity research with auction records, auction-house context, sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots when those records are available. Identity and market conclusions remain limited to the evidence collected for each artist.

## Sources

- IdRef: https://www.idref.fr/07156490X
- VIAF: https://viaf.org/viaf/79405322/
- Tate: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/malangatana-ngwenya-18868
- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q384560
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500329606
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malangatana_Ngwenya
- Appraisily: https://appraisily.com/artist/malangatana/