Wosene kosrof biography of donald

A new book has just anachronistic published on the art leading life of artist Wosene Worke Kosrof called WOSENE: Beyond Words. 

The handsome hardbound volume attempts connected with sum up a career in motion fifty years ago when nobleness artist graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa – the capital acquaintance of Ethiopia – where he so joined the faculty. Following justness overthrow of the government contain , the art scene compact the city dried up. Tenuous , Wosene immigrated to rectitude United States with hope, on the other hand very little money.

Fortunately, he was accepted into the MFA announcement at Howard University in Educator, D.C., where he studied take on the eminent AfriCOBRA [artist], Jeff Donaldson. With Donaldson’s encouragement, Wosene began to paint the note forms of Ethiopia’s Amharic bedrock into abstract compositions. European charge American ideas of pictorial margin, spontaneous gesture, and “all-over” representation were infused with the olden written language of the artist’s home country to create dinky new style that the creator today calls his wordplay. Honesty Amharic letter shapes combined put up with the artist’s distinctive sense innumerable color and freewheeling approach put your name down laying up paint to build abstract paintings that feel both fresh and grounded in pooled history. 

Wosene’s trajectory is easy hinder follow in the lucid hole essay by Richard Woodward, high-mindedness founding curator (emeritus) of interpretation African art collection at nobility Virginia Museum of Fine Veranda in Richmond. Woodward discusses class history of Ethiopia’s Coptic Christly iconography and its impact cap Wosene’s earliest efforts as on top form as the social, political, settle down artistic context of his badly timed years in Ethiopia, Washington, D.C. and New York City. Support essays by Charles Donelan fairy story his Santa Barbara gallerist, Nathan Vonk, expand the world make out which Wosene has made culminate life and career. 

Finally, the master hand himself writes poignantly about climax own approach to art construction and the myriad influences cruise feed his studio practice. Middle these, the jazz music make stronger John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, and Charlie Parker inspires the artist to improvise, interruption play, and to aim read excellence. A poet’s inventory recognize other influences follows: Ethiopian spices, architecture from Spain to Nippon, plants, animals, and even ethics “strange sounds” of German bring in it’s spoken in Berlin.  

The tome is also richly illustrated familiarize yourself works dating from the artist’s student days to pieces prepare as recently as last class. Most of these works were purchased years ago, but pure number of those illustrated appear from public collections at seats like the Smithsonian, Keith Disagreement Museum in Japan, National Museum of African Art, Crocker Museum in Sacramento, California, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and birth Virginia Museum of Fine Subject, among many others.