Tegene Kunbi (b. 1980, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He completed a Painting and Art Education degree at the Fine Arts School at the University of Addis Abeba in 2004 and went on to teach at Kotebe College Academy. With the help of the prestigious DAAD scholarship, he left Ethiopia in 2008 to study at the Universität der Künste Berlin, where he obtained a Master of Fine Arts in 2011. Kunbi’s art draws from his African heritage while engaging with global artistic movements, fusing traditional African aesthetics with contemporary forms of expression. His artworks are colorful and balanced at the same time. Each hue is chosen and painted in conversation with the others on the canvas. From a structural point of view, the visual harmony is conveyed through the rectilinear grid, which is the ever-evolving element in the artist’s production. Depending on the tonality, density and the grid chosen, each canvas is invaded by dynamism and details.
His signature abstract works have been showcased globally in numerous exhibitions, including Dripping time, fading memory, Primo Marella Gallery, Milan, Italy (2025); Bending Back, Standing Pine in Tokyo, Japan (2024); Tessellations Through Time, Galerie Dutko in Paris, France (2023); Meeting Points and Holding On, Gallery 1957, Accra, Ghana (2023); Patchwork Freedoms, Primo Marella Gallery, Milan, Italy (2023); Don’t Talk, Bode in Berlin, Germany (2023); Tegene Kunbi, Barbara Thumm Gallery in Berlin (2022); Warp and Weft, Primo Marella Gallery, Milan, Italy (2022), and Re: public, Circle Art Gallery, Nairobi, Kenya (2019), among others.
