The Classroom

The Classroom depicts Wosene Kosrof’s personal and humorous version of the Amharic alphabet charts used to teach school children in Ethiopia. The artist selected letters and pictures related to items and places that are fundamental to Ethiopian life and culture (coffee, injera bread, and Lalibäla, the location of several of Ethiopia’s famous rock-cut churches). Wosene emigrated to the United States in 1978 during the reign of the Communist government. He settled in Washington, DC, where he received his MFA from Howard University, and went on to become one of the giants of 20th-century Ethiopian painting, influencing both his peers and younger generations of artists in the diaspora and beyond.