Tulu Guya is a plastic artist who has created his
own visual language. Although he has explored different socio-cultural and
historical themes in his long career, his main concern has always been to seek
and build an artistic style that manages to establish a social dialogue and
create a relationship between trees and humanity. In addition, he also tries to
represent horses. It is important to highlight the great technical mastery of
drawing and the use of the line as one of its dominant resources in his
depiction of houses, representing their emotions as a symbol of loyalty, hope,
and beauty in the hostile world we live in. It is worthwhile to recognize the
great technical mastery of drawing and the use of lines as one of the dominant
resources of painting in Tulu’s artistic creation.
Sometimes, as children, we have a different dream.
However, when the sun of luck shines on someone, it suddenly connects their
luck to their destiny. That opportunity they seize today will ultimately become
their destiny. Tulu Guya was born in 1938 near Dalo, Bishoftu, in Eastern Shoa.
He dreamed of becoming a royal guard and a historian. He enjoyed reading books,
and he was particularly drawn to those with pictures that told stories.
Although he never dreamed of becoming a painter, his inborn attention to detail
gave him the chance. In 1964, when he was a high school student, his drawing
won a second-place prize at Shankar’s International Children’s Drawing
Competition. Although Tulu confessed to having no inclination towards painting as
a child, winning the competition was a sign that he had an inborn affinity for
art.
The
painter and graphic artist Tulu Guya linked his love of nature with his works
without being limited by the influence of the famous artists that surrounded
him within the family, including the well-known Lemma Guya. The stories of the
trees he knew just like his own palm and the folktales he had heard as a child
in the local culture became central themes in his art. Thus, in his visual
language, he made them speak of the lives of damaged tree branches whose leaves
have been hurt. To this end, Tulu used trees as the main subject of his works
to show his own world through his own culture and natural environment. His
remarkable memory is a testament to his unparalleled ability to be a
storyteller and a repository of the cultural wisdom of his community. From
1966–1970, he studied painting and graphic arts at the Addis Ababa Art School
of Fine Arts, where he graduated with good results and received his diploma
from Emperor Haile Selassie I. As for his excellent school activities, his
veteran teachers, such as Ale Felege, Tadesse Gizaw, and Abdurahman Sharif,
have all attested to his great educational performance, artistic skills, and
knowledge.
After
graduation, he was assigned as an art teacher to Arba Gugu, in the Benchi Magi
zone of southern Ethiopia. The fact that Arba Gugu was a place surrounded by
forest gave him the possibility to be more interested in the subject, and he
began to study the nature of trees. He also worked as a Senior Technician of
Appropriate Technology at the Education Development Center of Chilalo District
Schools, in Asela town, until 1982. There had been problems in schools in
facilitating educational support materials such as human anatomy, tables, and
maps; he helped the schools address this problem with his high-quality wooden
reproductions. During his stay there, he was recognized as a model teacher. In
all the institutions he worked for, Tulu demonstrated his great artistic
creativity for social services, which is a clear testament to his alignment
with the principle of art for art’s sake. His high level of skill in graphic
arts contributed enough to his different artistic creations. Because Tulu paid
much attention to trees in his artistic works, a holiday postcard from the
former FDRE, Girma Woldegiyorgis, addressing the country for three consecutive
years, was decorated with Tulu’s tree-related works.
Since 1970, Tulu Guya, in his long artistic
experience and career, has participated in many private and group art
exhibitions in the country and abroad. He has received special recognitions in
Ethiopia and abroad for his highly developed visual art experiences. Therefore,
he is considered one of the most prominent modern and contemporary Ethiopian artists.
