Desta Hagos—the first Ethiopian woman artist to do a solo painting exhibition

Desta Hagos – A Unique Woman Artist with Staying Power

By Mimi Woldearegay

Desta Hagos is the first Ethiopian woman artist to do a solo painting exhibition in the country. She did this in 1969, in the year of her graduation from the then Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts. She is also one of the few individuals who have lost treasured thirty paintings and survived the agony of loss to tell the tale.

Her first inclination for the artistic came when she was about five. “When I was just a tiny child I remember that I adored flowers and plants, and love to cut flowers so that I can look at their beauty at home,” she said, recalling her naïve and at times cruel love for beauty and colors.

She said her father kept her away from this habit by telling her, “Don’t kill the flowers; they have life like you. I will buy you coloring pencils and you can draw them exactly as they were alive.”

Desta recalls with fond recollection how she inherited her father’s love for music and poetry. “Listening to music has been always a backdrop for my artistic temperament,” she said, smiling in her warm and delightfully light-filled small studio-cum-home in Addis Ababa.

She was only nine when she left Adwa for Addis Ababa and joined Etege Menen School. And she won her artistic victory at the age of 14 and came first in the International Children’s Arts Competition organized by the Indian Government.

Desta received her Diploma in Fine Arts from the Fine Arts School in 1969. She had the opportunity to be guided and taught for five years by the renowned artist Gebre Kirstos Desta. She also had a studio with four devoted male artists at the vibrant Creative Arts Center at the University where she had her first and last experience of being an actress at the stage.

“I had no idea what I was doing. I just used to love watching plays. But, artist Debebe Eshetu and the late Wogayehu Negatu encouraged me to try my hand at it,” she said. Desta remembers, laughing, that they found her maiden acting very good. In January 1970, she traveled to the USA and joined the California Lutheran University to graduate with a B.A degree in Fine Arts. Her first year’s tuition fees was paid by her elder sister, who is a nurse living in the US. However, because she impressed her instructors so much she won a full scholarship starting from her second year, and was able to participate in two group, and two solo exhibitions during her four years of study with the great assistance from the University.

It was as she was completing her studies that she faced her first tragedy that has left a scar till today. She was interviewed and invited by Deuche Welles in Germany to hold an exhibition and had, therefore, sent ahead thirty of her best paintings by cargo. On reaching Germany, she found out that the cargo had not arrived and that even after a one-month long wait, it was not to be found. She had to cancel her exhibition.

“It was like my paintings had disappeared from the face of the earth. You cannot imagine what it means to lose 30 paintings, a labor of love without a trace. I have not found them and I mourn their loss still,” she said with a bittersweet and painful smile.

Despite her acute disappointment, Desta was eager to return home to Addis Ababa, at the beginning of 1975. But another disappointment a waited her at home. With the coming of the Derg, or military junta, she found her country besieged by political tension. On arriving, she realized that the life of her ex-husband, Mr. Yohannes, was threatened and he had to flee the country. To make matters worse, she gave birth to her only daughter, Feben, whom she raised single-handedly.

Desta then joined in 1976 the Ethiopian Tourist Organization where she worked for 10 years. She was then transferred to the Ethiopian Tourist Trading Enterprise as Acting Head of the Promotion and Public Relations of the Artistic Department for many years. She was then promoted and worked as head until just five months ago, when she left the organization. She is currently refurbishing her own studio in Addis and plans to devote her full time to the thing she loves and does best – the art world.

She said that the Derg years were not conducive to artistic development and during the two decades she was able to do only a few group exhibitions.

Two of the recent highlights of her career occurred when her painting titled “Exile” was purchased by the UNHCR for 30,000 birr. The painting was presented during a one-day exhibition at the UNECA and depicts African refuges fleeing their homes, families and friends as a result of man-made and natural disasters. The other highlight occurred four years back when her painting “Pounding Pepper” together with that of Tibebe Teferra was selected among works of art from 13 African countries to be displayed in the Contemporary African Art Exhibition in Canada.

Now that things have changed for the better, she held her first solo exhibition in decades in 1994. “I worked day and night in order to display my paintings; I missed not showing my art for so long,” she says. She started actively participating in several exhibitions with top known and contemporary Ethiopian Artists such as Maitre Artist Afework Tekle.

Desta’s techniques range from the realistic to the semi-abstract and abstract. “Most of my works are semi-abstract and I use Ethiopian landscapes and day-to-day life as my subject matter.” She uses colors wonderfully to make them vibrate as if they have life of their own. The Ethipian Herald in its edition of June 1, 1969 had this to say about the works of Desta.

“…Desta shows both a high degree of technical ability both rare and essential in an artist. She can make you stop and look. She can even make you see…” Indeed, 30 years later, you can observe this unique ability developed into an art that prepossess the viewer wholly.
Desta is a remarkable woman. Circumstances beyond her control forced her to face the world alone, and be a single mother. In both career and personal life, she was and is still one of the most successful and respected artists in Ethiopia. She managed this without any outside help, maintaining her beautiful sense of worth and optimistic frame of mind despite many troubles.

Desta is like a phoenix that keeps rising from its ashes – renewed and revitalized.

Source: here