Ethiopian artists

Ethiopia has one of the longest art traditions in Africa: the stelae of Aksum, the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, painted church walls, illuminated manuscripts, icons and magic scrolls. Modern Ethiopian art grew from that inheritance. Agegnehu Engida was a pioneer of modern painting before the Second World War, and Alefelege Selam founded the School of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa in 1958, which trained the first modern generation; Afewerk Tekle became the country's laureate painter, maker of the Africa Hall windows; Skunder Boghossian and Gebre Kristos Desta led the move to abstraction.

Many later Ethiopian artists built careers abroad, often after the 1974 revolution: Wosene Worke Kosrof paints with the letters of the Amharic script, Mickaël Bethe-Selassié sculpts in papier-mâché in Paris, and Aida Muluneh makes vivid staged photographs and founded the Addis Foto Fest. In 2024 Tesfaye Urgessa represented Ethiopia at its first pavilion at the Venice Biennale. These are Ethiopia's artists with Wikipedia articles, most looked-up first. See also Ethiopian art and East Africa.