Art Exhibition at Sheraton

The second annual Art of Ethiopia exhibition took place at Sheraton Addis from September 3rd until September 6th 2009. Elegantly installed at the Lalibela Ballroom, the show included masterpiece after masterpiece by well-known and lesser-known artists.300 paintings of artists ranging from Afeweork Tekle, Ale Felege Selam and Yohannes Gedamu through young painters Dawit Abebe, Mathias Lulu were presented at the exhibition.The exhibition included different disciplines, from traditional figurative painting to abstract works, sculpture, and stone carving.

One of the works exhibited, Arada (3) by Getahun Assefa, a teacher at the School of Fine Arts Design and an artist who specialized in monumental art, displays a woman with Kirar, a musical instrument, inspired by a woman he has known in Arada, a district in present Piassa. Getahun uses oil on canvas as his favored medium, preferring it to tempera on wood panel. The work deservedly sold for 25,000 Birr.
Desta Hagos, another renowned artist with love for bright colors, displayed one of her best known works, The Joy of Colors. Desta’s bright, rich and strong colors betray heavy influence from Gebre Kirstos Desta, who was her teacher.

Another of her piece of work on display was “The Stage”, a work that she did in 1969 but disappeared subsequently. It was later discovered at the Addis Ababa University and was given back to her.
The spacious and ornate exhibition hall of the Sheraton drew unusually large number of visitors. Lulseged Retta, a participating artist and organizer of the exhibition, told Addis Journal that around 13,000 people visited the exhibition. He said the exhibition was very successful and received many positive feedbacks.
An art catalog has been printed for the show and went on sale. It was announced that all proceeds from the sale of the art catalog will go towards establishing the Sheraton Addis Endowment Fund whose purpose is to sponsor the artistic talent of Ethiopia.
As this will be the first show in which the fund comes to live, the proceeds will be used to sponsor the School of fine Arts Design here in Addis Ababa.

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