Eastern Africa

Art from East Africa, from Ethiopian churches and Swahili carving to Makonde sculpture, Tingatinga painting and contemporary practice.

No works indexed yet · 10 related artists

No open-access works for Eastern Africa are in the index yet. They will appear here as more collections are indexed.

About

In Ethiopia, craftsmen cut churches straight down into the rock at Lalibela in the 12th and 13th centuries, and painters illuminated manuscripts and icons in an Orthodox style still practised today. Along the Swahili coast, carvers in Lamu and Zanzibar framed doorways with dense floral relief. Further south, the soapstone birds of Great Zimbabwe and the wood sculpture of Makonde carvers in Tanzania and Mozambique show very different sculptural traditions.

Modern schools emerged in the mid-20th century at Makerere in Uganda and in Addis Ababa, where Skunder Boghossian blended Ethiopian script and symbols with Surrealism. In Tanzania, Edward Saidi Tingatinga launched a popular style of glossy enamel animal paintings in the 1960s, and in Mozambique Malangatana painted crowded, anguished figures. Contemporary artists include Wangechi Mutu, who collages hybrid female figures, the Kenyan-born potter Magdalene Odundo, maker of burnished vessels, and Gonçalo Mabunda, who welds decommissioned weapons into thrones.