About
Wosene
Wosene Worke Kosrof was born in 1950 in the Arat Kilo district of Addis Ababa. As a child he learned to write the Amharic language, mastering its complex script of more than 220 fidäl (syllable characters). He also demonstrated a precocious talent for drawing and later nurtured both skills while attending the School of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa (now the School of Art and Design of Addis Ababa University). He received the BFA With Distinction in 1972. Among his teachers were Gebre Kristos Desta, who encouraged students to pursue their unique vision, and Yigezu Bisrat, a graphic designer and calligrapher with whom Wosene heightened his love of the complexities and nuances of script.
After briefly serving on the faculty at the School in Addis Ababa, Wosene migrated to the United States in 1978, where as a Ford Foundation Talent Scholar he earned the MFA at Howard University in 1980. There, his mentor, Jeff Donaldson, urged Wosene not to abandon his heritage but through his art to share his personal experience and vision.
Over a career of nearly fifty years, Wosene has developed a distinctive artistic ‘signature’ by exploring the complexities of Amharic fidäl not as literal words but as images that create their own visual language as expressive devices by elongating, dissecting, distorting, and reassembling their complex forms. He often mines the graphic aspects of icons from other ‘alphabets,’ such as the cables of the Brooklyn Bridge and graffiti in New York, a Coke can with Amharic lettering, or a simple item like a metal clothes hanger. His attention to the world’s other ‘alphabets’ has also led him to develop an international visual language by adopting graphic cues from sources as diverse as torii gates in Japan and the geometric designs of Kuba textiles from central Africa. His abstract compositions are bold and courageous, rich and sophisticated in coloration and painted with an improvisational bravura reflecting his love of jazz.
Wosene lives and has his studio in Berkeley, California. He has been given numerous solo exhibitions, often accompanied by catalogues with scholarly essays, and his work has been included in important monographs on contemporary African art, abstraction, and the use of script in art.
GALLERIES:
1) Skoto Gallery, New York, NY – www.skotogallery.com
2) Sullivan Goss Gallery, Santa Barbara CA – www.sullivangoss.com
3) Lori Austin Gallery, Sonoma, CA – www.loriaustingallerysonoma.com
Lori Austin Gallery, Healdsburg, CA - www.loriaustingalleryhealdsburg.com
4) The Loft Galeria, Puerto Vallarta, MX – www.theloftgaleria.com
5) Paul Mahder Gallery, Healdsburg, CA – www.paulmahdergallery.com
6) Madelyn Jordon, West Chester, NY – www.madelynjordonfineart.com
7) Danny Jenkins Gallery, Memphis, TN – www.waterkoloursfineart.com
8) Stella Jones Gallery, New Orleans, LA – www.stellajonesgallery.com
