This bibliography focuses on visual arts, namely painting, architecture, sculpture, engravings, and, to a degree, textiles, produced within the Ethiopian region (now divided into Ethiopia and Eritrea) during the long period from the rock art of the Holocene era to contemporary art. In the northern part of this area, people of South Arabia developed important settlements during the first millennium BCE. There, the Aksumite kingdom flourished from the 1st century BCE until the 7th century CE, and was Christianized in the 4th century. There are very few remains of Christian Aksumite art, but from the 13th to the 20th centuries, there was an uninterrupted production of religious paintings and church buildings. Islam spread to this part of Africa from its beginnings, and Muslim sultanates developed from this time in the eastern region and then most specifically around Harar, from the 16th century onward. At the end of the 19th century, Menelik, King of King of Ethiopia, expanded the southern part of his country, doubling its size. Limited bibliographical information is presented here for artistic productions in this part of this modern nation. In fact, the geographic areas covered by this bibliography vary according to the period. For prehistoric art, we give examples in the whole Horn of Africa, which is the scale at which the specialists of this region are working.
The published proceedings of the second conference, held at Nieborów, Poland, convened by the National Museum of Poland in September 1990, though the papers presented at the conference and the edited articles are not entirely the same. The topics are widened with papers on coinage, contemporary paintings, and popular art, including sculpture and architecture of the Rift Valley and the tombs of the Oromo people.
