Apr 22, 2021 - Sale 2565

Sale 2565 - Lot 197

Price Realized: $ 17,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 25,000
WOSENE WORKE KOSROF (1950 - )
Word Play XVIII.

Acrylic on cotton canvas, 2007. 1016x686 mm; 40x27 inches. Signed in acrylic, lower right recto. Signed, titled, and inscribed "40"x 27", Acrylic/Canvas" in ink, verso.

Provenance: private collection, California.

Born in the Arat Kilo district of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Wosene Worke Kosrof is a contemporary painter and sculptor who has an international reputation for his unique abstraction. Formally trained at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts, he completed a BFA with distinction in 1972. Then, as a Ford Foundation Talent Scholar, he was awarded an MFA in 1980 from Howard University in Washington, DC. Over the past four decades, Wosene (his professional name) has developed his use of the script forms – fiedel – of his native Amharic as a core element in his paintings and sculptures. His artwork today is in many institutional collections including the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington, DC, the National Museum of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, the Newark Museum, the Neuberger Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Fowler Museum at UCLA.