The Heart of Dance

Wosene Worke Kosrof was born in 1950, in the Arat Kilo district of Addis Ababa. A studio painter for more than 40 years, Wosene (his professional name) was academically trained in Ethiopia and the United States and was among the first African contemporary artists to gain critical international attention. The artist’s inspirations are varied, drawing upon African traditions, personal experience, American jazz, and Western art practices.

Wosene’s canvases are multi-layered with paint and imagery, but he is best known for his ingenious use of the Amharic script, one of the world’s oldest languages, and is the first Ethiopian-born contemporary artist to incorporate these symbols as a root element in fine art paintings. The artist elongates, distorts, and assembles letters into forms of universal appeal beyond their linguistic meaning. There is rich dialoguing between the simplified letter forms and symbols that are intensely worked creating color-drenched textured surfaces of visual power. American jazz improvisations are evident in the active syncopation of the surface of many Wosene paintings. Fractured images of jazz instruments, musical notes, and strings can be found amongst household objects and figures as well as layers of paint, recalling the overall whimsical and joyful compositions of jazz.

Kosrof exhibits widely in international galleries.  His works are in numerous museum collections, including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (DC); Library of Congress; Newark Museum (NJ); The Neuberger Museum of Art (NY); Indianapolis Museum of Art (IN); Birmingham Museum of Art (AL); Samuel P. Harn Museum (FL); the National Museum, Addis Ababa; Volkerkunde Museum, Zurich, Switzerland.