The most celebrate Ethiopian artist Afework Tekele has passed away last night at Kadisco Hospital in Addis Ababa. He was 80 years old. He was most famous for his paintings on African and Christian themes as well as his stained glass.

Artist Afwork was first 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.”

Afewerk was invited to put on an exhibition in Moscow following which he toured the Soviet Union giving lectures. The American government responded with an invitation for one man exhibitions in Washington and New York and a similar lecture tour of American universities. Additional international exhibitions followed in Senegal, Turkey, Zaire, the United Arab Republic, Bulgaria, Munich, Kenya and Algeria.

Through much of the 1970s Afewerk was engaged in producting murals and mosaics for many public and religious buildings around Ethiopia, including the murual Last Judgement in the Adigat Cathedral in Tigrai. In 1977, his painting Unity Triptych won the gold medal in the Algiers International Festival.

The early 1980s saw a second major exhibition in Moscow and an exhibition in Bonn. In 1981, his painting Self-portrait was the first work by an African artist to enter the permanent collection of the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.

In 1997 he exhibited at the Biennale of Aquitaine, France, winning first prize in the international competition. He was also nominated the Laureate of the Biennale which gave him membership of the French International Academy of Arts.

Today Afewerk continues to live and work in Addis Ababa, in his self designed 22-room 'Villa Alpha'.

Also Afewerk Tekle have membership of the Russian Academy of Arts, so he became the first African member in 1983.