Estate of Ficre Ghebreyesus
Ficre Ghebreyesus
Untitled, 2008
Acrylic on unstretched canvas
72 ½ x 216 in (184.2 x 548.6 cm)
(GL14219)
Making its public debut at Art Basel Unlimited 2024, Ficre Ghebreyesus’s monumental, unstretched painting Untitled (2008) is a stunning chromatic exploration of pinks, blues, and purples, drawing from the bright palette of Ghebreyesus’s mature work. The abstraction evokes an intricate weaving, or a landscape populated with detailed passages. Allusions to windows and portals throughout combined with the fluid, watery composition are reminders of the movement in the artist’s life caused by war and displacement. This sense of journeying and transformation is underscored by the painting’s many and varied horizons. With its grand scale and intended
proximity to the wall, Untitled also recalls the religious frescoes and murals of the artist’s childhood in Asmara, Eritrea.
Ficre Ghebreyesus (born 1962 in Asmara, Eritrea; died 2012 in New Haven, Connecticut) was an Eritrean American artist whose colorful, lyrical paintings seamlessly fused abstraction and figuration, evoking the non-linear forms of dreams, memories, storytelling, and the artist’s evolving sense of home.