A Review of Daniel Taye’s exhibit

Daniel Taye’s Oil Baron, an exhibit of 25 paintings is on view at the Lela Art Gallery from September 15 through September 30, 2012.Daniel who is best known for his portraits and landscapes is admired by art lovers and fellow artists. The artist who a few years ago reportedly suffered bouts of depression, alcoholism and an inability to paint has been fighting against all his hurdles and working up right to the end. With the help of his girlfriend (whose beautiful portrait he has done for this year’s Art of Ethiopia) who is encouraging him to keep painting, Daniel is getting back his momentum and producing high technical standards like those he did before.

A chat with Addis’s foremost art afficionado

For Mesfin Gebreyes Oda, art has always been an object of interest, starting from his early school days at Lycée Guebre Mariam in the mid fifties and sixties. But it was a chance encounter with the works of Ethiopian modernist artist Gebre Kirstos Desta that made him take the business of art collecting seriously, an unusual passion for an Ethiopian. The 60-year-old Mesfin recalled the day when someone approached him and asked him if he was interested in acquiring the works of the artist Gebre Kirstos. He went right away and saw the self-portrait of Gebre Kirstos and three other of his sketches. “I was so moved. I bought the whole lot, four of them. That was twenty years ago,” he told me recently, sitting in the garden of Sheraton Addis.
Since then Mesfin has been collecting paintings and drawings of Gebre Kirstos, Skunder Boghossian and many other contemporary artists. Find the full story at the Ethiopia Observer.

New museum named after Gebre Kristos

A notable addition to the cultural and artistic life of Addis!

A renovated and expanded Modern Art Museum named after Gebre Kristos Desta, who lived and painted from 1932 to 1981, opened on Friday, October 10, 2008.

The museum, situated in the premise of the Faculty of the Business of the Addis Ababa University, is touted as the first of its kind in the city. The lavish exteriors and the interiors of the building are of architectural and historical importance in themselves. They provide a rich setting for collections that cover virtually every aspect of fine arts.