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 addition to international conferences on Ethiopian studies, specific congresses dedicated to art have occurred since 1986. They were organized first at the instigation of the historian Richard Pankhurst, founder of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies (IES) at Addis Ababa University, and Stanislaw Chojnacki, keeper of the IES Museum until the revolution, who were both prolific writers on Ethiopian art and history. First focusing on Christian art, the proceedings of these conferences addressed very specific points and do not provide any general overviews. They show, however, a field of study and how this field is pragmatically defined. If these conferences have not always gathered every art historian who is a specialist on Ethiopia, they do give good insights into scholars interested in the field at least at one point in their careers, and thus provide a list of scholars to follow. Even if the articles published in these proceedings are of very different quality, they may be mined for information. Intervals between the conferences have been irregular. To date, ten conferences have met, and proceedings were published for six of them.
