• 📍 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

Painting

Girmachew Getnet

Painter

Born in Ethiopia and based in Frankfurt am Main for many years, Girmachew Getnet works across large-format figurative and abstract painting. His ongoing 'Circle – Humans' concept draws on the Ubuntu philosophy, 'I am because we are', blending colour to bring together people of every language, tradition and way of life.

Girmachew Getnet is from Ethiopia and has lived in Frankfurt am Main for many years. His childhood and background in Ethiopia and Africa shape his creative voice, while Frankfurt's multicultural spirit, and the people from all over the world he meets there, inspire his daily work and his 'Circle – Humans' ideas.

His style is a multifaceted visual narrative. He fuses different eras and faces the way he mixes colours on a canvas, portraying human history as one big family in which the old and the new merge into a unified whole. As a freelance artist, he expresses his ideas across various media and styles.

Most of his earlier work is figurative. Prompted by global chaos, conflict and war, he turned to large-scale abstract painting as a way of exploring inner peace. These paintings emerge spontaneously in the studio, merging the orderly and the disorderly, and are never truly finished: he returns to them over time, adding layers, so that they grow and change just as people do.

“I’m from Ethiopia, but my art is universal.”