From Addis Ababa to Dresden. The artist Martha Ketsela and "Das Glück der Erde"

A series of woodcuts archived at the Dresden University of Fine Arts bears witness to the cultural-political relations between the GDR and Ethiopia. Within this framework, the artist Martha Ketsela completed an internship on site.

It was not her first visit to the GDR when the artist Martha Ketsela arrived from Addis Ababa in 1980. Two years earlier, she had been part of the group exhibition Junge Kunst aus Äthiopien (Young Art from Ethiopia), which also included the artist Ejigayehu Tesfaye and the artist Demmelash Adal.

After their stay, all three sought to study in the GDR. Two of them were eventually granted an internship at the Art Academy in Dresden, so that Adal and Ketsela began their stay in the GDR in the fall of 1979 with a German course at the Herder Institute in Leipzig. Such a language class was required for all international guests who aspired to study in the GDR.

In the preparation for the internship, which was scheduled to start in January 1980, Ketsela and Adal were to make sketches and drawings. Martha Ketsela was able to gain insight into different specialized classes. She worked mainly under the aegis of the artist Hernando León and in the workshop for typography with Horst Schuster.

Within the framework of the six months, a series of woodcuts was created, which was printed in 15 copies. It is entitled Das Glück der Erde (The Happiness of the Earth). The six graphic sheets each have a motif as their center. In a formally reduced aesthetic that tends toward the abstract, they illustrate aphorisms that stand above them.

"The proverbs have each been translated into German or Amharic, with the German and Ethiopian scripts juxtaposed as headings. With the series, Ketsela seems to ask whether these proverbs have the same meaning as worldly wisdoms or condensed philosophies in their respective languages. Here, the illustrations of the aphorisms and the visual arts in general apparently become a means of understanding between the partnering countries" and still bear witness to the cultural-political relations forty years later. (translated by Art in Networks, quoted from Lagoda, Jule/Schankweiler, Kerstin: Im Archiv der globalen DDR. Zeugnisse transnationaler Kunstgeschichten, in: Re-Connect: Kunst und Kampf im Bruderland, Hurttig/Weeratunga (eds.), Munich 2023).

Ketsela and Adal's stay in the GDR in 1980 also included their participation in the international Triennale Intergrafik, which took place in Berlin in February and March of the same year and for which the artist Ejigayehu Tesfaye traveled to the country again.