AFEWERK TEKLE, Ethiopia’s leading artist, was born on October 22nd, 1932 from Woyzero Feleketch Yematawork and Ato Tekle Moamo in the old historic city of Ankober in Shoa Province, Ethiopia. As a school-boy in the then recently liberated Ethiopia, Afewerk revealed an intense artistic interest in life around him. He was ever found busy with pencil or pen sketching and drawing, even during chemistry, mathematics or history classes.Sent to England in 1947 to become a mining engineer, his artistic talent was soon perceived. He was accepted at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London and later went to the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of London, the famous “Slade”. While studying in England he made several artistic pilgrimages to the continent of Europe.On the completion of his studies he returned to Addis Ababa where he held a one-man exhibition at the Municipality Hall in 1954. It was the first significant art exhibition of post-war Ethiopia.

Soon after his exhibition he left Ethiopia for a study tour in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and Greece. In addition to these countries, he carried out various studies in England. He also made a special study of the Ethiopian illustrated manuscripts in the British Library, the Bibliothẻque Nationale in Paris and the Vatican Library, thereby gaining a deeper knowledge of his own artistic heritage.
After two years of this extensive study, Afewerk, by now a well–equipped artist, returned with full confidence to his native land, to tackle the task ahead.

On his arrival in Ethiopia, Afewerk opened his studio in the National Library of Ethiopia. Soon afterwards he was given his first challenging commission by the Ethiopian Government: the decoration of St. George’s Cathedral, one of the capital’s two most important religious edifices, where he worked on murals and mosaics for three and a half years.

While working on St. George’s Cathedral he realized his first important stained glass windows for the Military Academy in Harrar depicting four of Ethiopia’s military heroes as well as producing his first monumental sculpture. Though his interest in sculpture was second only to that in painting, he conceived many sculptural designs of the heroic people of Ethiopia. For various reasons only one was actually realized: the equestrian stature of Ras Makonnen in Harrar. During his visit to Harrar he was so impressed by this picturesque old city that he produced no less than thirty paintings, some of which are now well known. The artist in this period and the ensuing years also gave a number of exhibitions which did much to enliven the capital’s artistic life.

The years from 1959 marked an intensification as well as a diversification of this remarkable artist’s creative talent. His reputation grew not only within the country but also internationally as his mastery over so many media was established. His drawings, paintings, murals, mosaics, stained-glass windows and sculptures, his designs for stamps, playing cards, posters, flags and national ceremonial dresses, all went to build up his position as Ethiopia’s foremost artist.

The playing cards were of particular interest in that they embodied a series of little-known Ethiopian motifs, some of them dating back to pre-Christian times and thus introduced Ethiopia’s artistic heritage to the card-playing public.
It is interesting to mention here that Afewerk designed his own house, studio and gallery, known as Villa “Alpha”. He was architecturally inspired by his own cultural heritage, especially by ancient Aksum, the mediaeval castles of Gondar and the old walled city of Harrar.

The artist’s complex of buildings was conceived as a whole in 1959, but was realized in stages over a period of fifteen years, as a third of the proceeds of every exhibition abroad was devoted to the construction of the work.

His 1961 retrospective exhibition in Addis Ababa was a major landmark in the country’s artistic life. One of the paintings exhibited is the now well-known Maskal Flower which made its debut on this occasion, and has since been exhibited in the USSR, the USA, and at the Festival of Negro Arts in 1965 at Dakar, Senegal. In this period when Africans were fighting for their independence and working for the unity of the continent Afewerk contributed in his works towards this ideal.

His paintings included titles such as “Backbones of African Civilization” “African Movement”, “African Atmosphere” and “African Unity”, and for Expo 67 in Montreal, Canada, “Africa’s Heritage” which in now in the permanent collection of the National Museum of Ethiopia. After many studies he produced over ten designs for an African Unity emblem and flag. Afewerk’s internationally famous stained-glass windows confronting the visitor in the entrance of Africa Hall, the headquarters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, is one of his greatest achievements; it shows his mastery on a gigantic scale (150sq.m.) of a medium which has inspired artists ever since the Middle Ages, and it embodies in its three panels Africa’s sorrowful past, present struggle, and its high aspirations for the future.

In 1964 he became the first winner of the Haile Sellassie I Prize for Fine Arts. The citation described him as a “versatile and disciplined artist”. And the prize was awarded “for his outstanding drawings, paintings, landscapes, and portraits which eloquently express his particular world environment, and for his contribution in being among the first to introduce contemporary techniques to Ethiopian subject matter and content.”
There followed a chain of invitations from various parts of the world. In 1964 Afewerk opened an impressive and successful exhibition in Moscow which was widely attended: he proceeded to visit many of the Artistic cities of the Soviet Union, giving lectures on the way. Later that year he went to the United States at the invitation of the American Government to present his one-man show in Washington and New York. He toured the country giving twenty-two lectures at various Universities and other cultural centers.

In the ensuing years he exhibited and lectured in Senegal, Turkey, Zaire, the United Arab Republic, Bulgaria, and Munich on the occasion of the XX Olympiad, Kenya and Algeria.

Afewerk has been engaged in many challenging works, such as the mural of St. Paul’s Hospital which was completed early in 1972, and the second and larger version of his Last Judgment, now in the Adigrat Cathedral in Tigrai. Afewerk continued meanwhile with his studies of Ethiopian faces, landscapes and costumes in an attempt to preserve this heritage for coming generations. Later compositions included murals of the old sites of Addis Ababa (the market), Awassa landscapes, Harrar and Sidamo compositions, and a new study for a mural of the celebrated Ethiopian Saint Abuna Taklahaymanot, the founder of the monastery of Dabra Libanos.

In the 1970’s Afewerk, though still deeply interested in the Ethiopian heritage and African culture, pondered on the unity of mankind, and on the need for world peace. Hence his painting entitled “Unity Triptych”: (a) The disunity of man. (b) Towards the unity of man. (c) Symbol of human unity. This won him the gold medal at the Algiers International Festival in 1977. In September 1980 Afewerk gave an important one-man show in the U.S.S.R., the first since the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974. This exhibition, the artist’s second appearance in the Soviet Union, was held at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Russian State Museum in Leningrad, and attracted a large number of art critics and art-lovers from many parts of the Soviet Union.

He was awarded the highest order of “Hero of Peace and Friendship”, and was recognized as the most significant and serious twentieth century artist from the African continent.

A year later Afewerk was invited by the Federal German Republic to exhibit his works at the IFA Galley in Bonn, and to give a series of illustrated lectures on his work and his Ethiopian artistic heritage, at Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt. The exhibition and visit re-awakened much enthusiasm among the German public with its long-standing scholarly interest in Ethiopia and her ancient culture.

This visit, like those which preceded it, gave Afewerk the opportunity to meet, know and exchange views with many contemporary artists and creative thinkers, as well as once more to study and re-evaluate the great masters.
In 1981, his work “Self-portrait” was the first from the African continent to be honoured for inclusion in the permanent collection of the Uffizi Museum, Florence, Italy.

Later, in 1997, he attended the Biennale of Acquitaine, France, where he exhibited two works: “The Chalice and the Cross in the Life of the African People” (a study for a stained glass window 12mx11m) and “The Sun of Senegal”. He won the first prize, with the second, third and fourth going to competitors from Japan, France and Mexico respectively. He was also nominated Laureate of the Biennale, an honour that carried with it the Grand Cordon with the Easel of Gold, and membership of the French International Academy of Arts.

Subsequently, in 2000, he was one of the few chosen as World Laureate of the American Biographical Institute at the 27th International Congress Millennium on the Arts and Communication in Washington DC.

In 2004, at the Thirtieth Anniversary of the International Congress on Science, Culture and the Arts, held in Dublin, Ireland, Afewerk was awarded the Da Vinci Diamond “for his Contribution to the Wealth of Human Learning and Advancement of Modern Art”. At the same venue, the United Cultural Convention of the USA awarded the artist the Valiant Award for “his efforts in promoting Global Harmony through his Contribution to World Art”.

Afewerk has mastered not only numerous media but has also shown ability to select the style most appropriate to his theme. He has not made a dogma of realism, symbolism, or abstract art, or of any other “ism” for that matter, but has used all of these approaches with imagination.

In recognition of his valuable contributions to African Art as a whole, Afewerk has been given many awards, medals and high decorations by heads of state of many parts of the world.

When we realize the extent of Afewerk’s creative output we can be confident that he will achieve much more in the future. His creative genius and his application to hard work have already set an example to his generation and assured his place not only as a leading Ethiopian artist but also as a figure in the art world of the twentieth century

Prof. Dr Richard Pankhurst