Education
Wosene (his professional name) was awarded his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa in 1972, and received an Master of Fine Arts from Howard University in 1980.
Wosene (his professional name) was awarded his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the School of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa in 1972, and received an Master of Fine Arts from Howard University in 1980.
He is best known for his inventive renderings of the Amharic script. And he is the first Ethiopian-born contemporary artist to incorporate these script symbols as a core aesthetic element in fine art paintings. His recognizable "signature" emerges by distorting, elongating, dissecting, and reassembling the symbols as images.
Wosene likes to examine the relationship between sound and color in art
He says jazz is especially important in his own creative process. Wosene"s paintings, in his words, "..create a visible, interacting surface - like an icon available to everyone.
lieutenant allows them to have dialogue, to take them into memory.."
Wosene reflected on the effects of learning to see by viewing art in context of relationship between the risks of adolescence and the risks of art and stated: "Seeing differently, we then begin questioning our habits of mind and feel a new urge to create visions and images of what can be."
Wosene"s works are in museum collections, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (District of Columbia). The Newark Museum (New Jersey).
Neuberger Museum (New York).
Indianapolis Museum of Art (Indiana). Birmingham Museum of Art (Alabama). Fowler Museum, University of California, Los Angeles (California).
Samuel P. Harn Museum (Florida).
The National Museum (Addis Ababa). And in many international private and corporate collections.
He exhibits widely in the United States, and he works from his studio in Oakland, California.