Urban art in North-eastern Africa: The painter Keflä Haylä

An introduction is presented to the urban art, mostly of painted advertisements on public buildings, in Western and Northern Ethiopia, with a short reference to the rare cases observed in nearby Sudan. It is also an opportunity to consider some of the folk paintings housed in the Asosa Ethnographic Museum (Benishangul-Gumuz, Western Ethiopia) re-installed by the authors in 2006-2009. Finally, a painter of this type of art, as well as funeral portraits and traditional religious art, the Ethiopian Keflä Haylä, was interviewed in Asosa and a summary of his life and outstanding work in various contexts is also presented.