WOSENE WORKE KOSROF (1950 - ) Untitled.

WOSENE WORKE KOSROF (1950 - )
Untitled.

Acrylic on cotton canvas, 1988. 445x279 mm; 17½x11 inches. Signed and dated in acrylic, lower right recto.

Provenance: gift from the artist to artist Jeff Donaldson, thence by descent; private collection.

Born in the Arat Kilo district of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Wosene Worke Kosrof is a contemporary painter and sculptor who has an international reputation for his unique abstraction. Formally trained at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts, he completed a BFA with distinction in 1972. Then, as a Ford Foundation Talent Scholar, he was awarded an MFA in 1980 from Howard University in Washington, DC. Over the past four decades, Wosene (his professional name) has developed his use of the script forms – fiedel – of his native Amharic as a core element in his paintings and sculptures. His artwork today is in many institutional collections including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, the National Museum of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, the Newark Museum, the Neuberger Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Fowler Museum at UCLA.