Callaloo

How did you come to know Skunder? He seemed to move about to many places—e.g., in Africa, Europe, and North America.

I did not start working with Skunder until he was well established at Howard University where he taught a masters class. I do know that he came to America in the early 1970s. Speaking of dates, there are some facts about Skunder that I think many people may not recognize. Skunder, after winning a competition, was sent by the Emperor to art school in Europe when he was fifteen years old. He did not return to Ethiopia until 1968, where he stayed until 1970, when the country was becoming increasingly unstable. He migrated to the United States never to return. So here is this quintessential Ethiopian artist, many would say the father of Ethiopian contemporary art, who only spent three years of his adult life in Ethiopia. The Ethiopian iconography, it seems, was as strong as his ability to absorb it.

Another interesting fact about his early life is that, the best I can figure, he was in art school at the School of Paris about the same time as the father of Senegalese contemporary art: Iba Ndiaye. It was a big and free-wheeling school so it is certainly possible that their paths did not cross; however, one must wonder if a friendship might have formed or there might have been a cross current of artistic influences.

While in Paris, Skunder reported to be influenced by Barque, Picasso, and he often mentioned Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam. However, as an impressionable young adult, he recalled that on a personal as well as a societal level it was Paris that made its mark. It was Paris that allowed him the freedom and independence to move outside the beautiful, but conservative, constricted, and traditional Ethiopian society he had known. In Ethiopia artistic freedom and experimentation would not have been welcomed or encouraged. Paris is the place that Skunder was both encouraged and allowed to become Ethiopia’s first modern contemporary artist.

Skunder stayed in Paris well after his education ended. Paris has a way of capturing your attention and your heart. When he returned to Ethiopia he taught at their School of Fine Arts and he made such an impression that the half dozen “second generation” artists I knew, to the person, talked about their personal struggle to create their own visual “voice” and independence. It is my opinion the Skunder influence was so strong that some of them, sadly, never did.

While in Ethiopia, there was an interesting and unusual work that Skunder created. He was there just at the time when Hilton was building the first international hotel in the country. One wall of the main restaurant/bar was a glass wall composed of 6″ × 6″ squares each encased in a heavy picture frame cornice. They invited Skunder to create an abstract work of each of those 6″ × 6″ squares. The abstraction of the panels would have been a challenge [End Page 14] for anyone who had not seen abstract art, but they certainly announced the “newness” of the Hilton Hotel. At least twenty-five years later I went for the first time to the Hilton with my wife and two Ethiopian children. We walked into the Hilton and there in front of us were Skunder’s works, many of them in disarray. A number had slipped out of position and some were loosely positioned as if waiting permanent mounting. I took this oversight to the hotel manager who, I think out of both embarrassment and gratitude, insisted we stay in the Hilton for free. Eventually, the works were properly placed and protected, and I take pride in that.

Could you explain exactly where that artwork was mounted in the Hilton in Addis Ababa? During my first trip to Ethiopia, Dagmawi Woubshet and Elizabeth Giorgis took me to the Hilton for tea. What a pity that I did not see Skunder’s work there. Where specifically at the Hilton was his art displayed?

I don’t stay...