A Tribute to Skunder Skunder Boghossian (Alex), one of the titans of African modernists, died on 4 May 2003 at the age of sixty-six. Born in Addis Ababa, Skunder was educated in Ethiopia and Europe. He was painting and design instructor at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts between 1966 and 1969. A few of Skunder’s remarks I grew up in the streets of Paris. I had no problem being black or yellow or green. I learned my craft. 1985 In passing I just happened to look in small gallery. I saw drawings in the window that actually gave me a bodily shock. So impressed by the dramatic play of forces and the supernatural quality of the work, I really couldn’t move. I don’t know how long I stood there. That was Lam. When I finally went inside I was startled again by Matta. In his paintings there was a cosmic coordination in space and time and his metallic rhythm vibrated in such a way that the canvases seemed to move. The effect of all this was confusing about my work, but eventually that confusion become a suggestion. 1973 Take jazz for instance. I always play jazz records when I paint. But jazz for me is more than just a sound-track: jazz provides me with a path of research that I do not somehow find in painting. 1968 Seeing one of my paintings, my Zebegna exclaimed, ‘Getoch, but that’s a dream! 1968 African art, and in particular, Ethiopian art, is the source of my inspiration. 1968 Professional football would make a fine study for an artist. 1957 Skunder: The Living Legend I first become an admirer of the legendary painter before I even had a chance to view his original works. Like many of my generation, I was able to see only reproductions of the art in black and white. Years later, when my artistic interest took me closer to the small group of Addis Ababa modernist artists, I was able to see Skunder’s original works and was also able to learn more about his work from the writings of critics and historians. I came to know much more about Skunder’s work, and become familiar with his personal characteristics through contact with his closest friends and students. From the beginning, like so many others, I was captivated by his work because it is intriguing and demanding. Just like in a dream world, the work has a goal to expose aesthetically the mystery of the state of our being - the past and the present-- and points us to the challenge of the future. Last month, when I went to Washington, D.C., to see the small exhibition at the National Museum of African Art, Ethiopian Passages: Dialogues in the Diaspora, I had a plan to meet Skunder. I meet Wosene Kosrof, Skunder’s younger brother, and Bekele Mekonnen, the former Director of the AA University School of Fine Arts and Design. Before I even was able to set up an appointment to visit Skunder on Sunday night, May 4th Wosene and Bekele called and told me the devastating and sad news. My first and the last opportunity to meet Skunder in person came in early 1987 when I was invited to Howard University in conjunction with a visit to the United States arranged by USIS. For several personal reasons, I was not able to meet Skunder ever again. I recall being aloof by the interest Skunder showed me during our discussion at the Howard University. He asked me on more than one occasion if students at the Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts are taught the history of jazz music and whether students were allowed to listen to jazz music, etc. The whole time I spent with him, his conversation revolved solely around Jazz music and jazz musicians. In contrast, my personal interest was to hear what Skunder had to say or ask about the state of art and the artists back home. Still, I was contented to learn more of his other passion – jazz music. However, in my desperate attempt to incite him to talk about his art , and since I wanted him to know what the younger generation of artists and my students thought of him, I informed him that he was treasured as a Living Legend back home. Contrary to what I had heard about him and as savvy and as famous as he was, I did not see in him any sign of vanity as a result of my remark. Rather, Skunder maintained only an uneasy and reserved expression. He did not show any sign of self- aggrandizement himself. He was too modest and too self-critical. I found him to be down to earth and refreshingly honest artist of his generation. The Legacy of Skunder In the few years Skunder stayed in his native land, he expanded the possibilities of painting and played a decisive role in emancipating 20th century Ethiopian painting from a dependence on Western academic art. His creative genius made possible many innovations to meet the demands of twentieth century Ethiopian art. He gave Ethiopian painting its untapped and yet unexplored world, the frontiers of which had been crossed before only by the tableaus of Gebre Kristos Desta. By masterfully manipulating his craft and depicting images imagined or dreamed and symbolic images from the ancient and the present Skunder –combined his talents with his influential personality and became the right man at the right time for an artistic reincarnation in his native land. With a small circle of friends and students loosely grouped around him, he was able to discuss and propagate his new aesthetic thought most effectively. No other painter has so gripped the imagination of fellow painters and educated elites alike. As his friend and art critic, Kifle Beseat, described him, Skunder was “above all a man who lives intensely, and who paints with the same intensity.” Skunder taught his friends and students not only his technical proficiency and the confidence which comes from the heart of promoting one’s art, but also the sophistication that is the style of a modernist artist. In so doing, he created a school of distinction of his own. The spirit of Skunder’s painting, an expression of an attitude and a state of mind and the expression of freedom of the individual, has not been silenced even during the tumult of Ethiopian recent history. The influence of the ‘Skunder School’ has been so powerful that even works of several next generation Ethiopian painters are being heavily influenced by it. While his friends, students, and their students and others influenced by his school have produced their own masterpieces and been able to reveal to us their versatility, none have been able to surpass Skunder’s remarkable work. Without Skunder, there would of course have been 20th Century Ethiopian painting, but how it might have developed without his can only be guesswork. In America, Skunder spent over thirty years teaching art. As one of the very few creators of an artistic language which fit perfectly the mind set of African modernists he was highly admired and respected by both African American and African artists. He was one of the few original painters of his generation who embraced the ultimate individualism and remained a pioneer and experimenter throughout his creative life. The totemic forces and the state of perpetual transformation-- created by the admired Lam and Matta, the two Surrealist painters that Skunder admired -- were the basis for his formal inventive. However, as no great artist of any age has ever attained success by artificially surrendering to temptation and detaching himself from his heritage, Skunder too was successful, not because he followed the mainstream of the Western Art movement, but because of his unique and original artistic approaches, both deeply rooted in his artistic and cultural heritage. Skunder’s friend, and poet, Solomon Deressa, places the legendary artist in the same category as Braque and Klee. Skunder’s achievements and contributions are to be considered like those of any giant artist of the 20th century. As Skunder was growing up and later as an adult and until his last day, was never short of Prizes, Certificates of Appreciation, Collectors, admirers, and disciples. He sustained the admiration of critics and artists throughout his career. In fact, unlike many hardworking black artists, or any artist for that matter, he never was deprived of fame and respect even in a white society. His paintings have been widely shown and collected in most countries of Europe and America and are in the collections of important museums and institutions. He has been showered with fulsome praise and fervent tributes from Africa –Ethiopia as well. Regrettable, however, his works are not to be found in any of the museums in African cities including the city of his birth - Addis Ababa. By: Esseye Medhin, June 8, 2003