Midonz
- Artist: Ronald Moody
- Date: 1937
- Medium: Elm
- Dimensions: object: 690 x 380 x 395 mm, 45kg
- Museum: Tate Modern
- Collection record: Tate Modern website
Listen to the free audio guide
About this artwork
This is the “Midonz” by Ronald Moody, carved in 1937 from a single block of elm. The work is a monumental, frontal head of a woman with long hair, standing on a square base carved from the same piece of wood. Moody described her as the “goddess of transmutation”, a figure who moves from physical matter to spiritual form, a theme tied to his interest in Gnosticism and the redemption of the spirit.
It belongs to a trio of hieratic heads—“Wohin”, “Tacet” and the male “Johanaan”—created in the late 1930s. The heads were shown in Paris and Baltimore in the 1930s, then disappeared for almost fifty years. They were recovered in 1993 at Hampton University Museum and returned to Moody’s estate in 1994.
Moody, born in Kingston, Jamaica, moved to London in 1923, where the British Museum’s ethnographic collection inspired his shift from dentistry to sculpture. “Midonz” captures a primordial woman with stylised, almost Amerindian features, blending pre‑Columbian and Egyptian carving traditions, and exudes a quiet, irresistible inner force.
See it in person
Midonz is in the collection of Tate Modern on Bankside, London — free to enter. Point your phone at any artwork there and audioguide.london plays a free audio guide in six languages — no app download needed.
