Beyond the studio
The pursuits that fed the artist and shaped the work.
Poetry
Afewerk Tekle was a serious reader and occasional writer of poetry. He read widely in Amharic, English, and French — Rimbaud, Pushkin, and the Kebra Nagast held permanent places on his reading table. He considered poetry and painting to be fundamentally the same activity: the making of concentrated truth.
Music
He maintained a deep engagement with music throughout his life — both traditional Ethiopian music and the Western classical tradition. He played the begena, the ancient Ethiopian harp associated with King David, and listened regularly to Bach and Beethoven while working. He believed music gave painting its sense of time.
Gardening
The garden of Villa Alpha was designed by Afewerk himself and tended by him personally until near the end of his life. He treated it as a painting — colour arranged by season, mass and line considered as carefully as any canvas. The Maskal flower, which recurs throughout his painted work, grew in abundance in this garden.
Architecture
Villa Alpha itself is evidence of his architectural ambition. He designed every element of the building and its interiors. He was a student of Ethiopian vernacular architecture, of Italian Renaissance civic building, and of the modernist tradition. He never resolved these influences into a single style, preferring instead the productive tension between them.
Philosophy
His library contained extensive holdings in philosophy — Ethiopian Orthodox theology, Western philosophy from Plato to Heidegger, and African philosophy including the texts of Léopold Sédar Senghor, whose concept of Négritude he engaged with critically. He was not a systematic thinker but a voracious one.
Travel
He traveled extensively throughout his life — Europe, America, and Africa. He kept detailed sketchbooks on every journey, filling them with faces, buildings, and colour studies. These sketchbooks, many of which survive at Villa Alpha, are among the most valuable documentary records of his creative process.