Ficre Ghebreyesus (March 21, 1962 – April 4, 2012) was an Eritrean-American artist who made colorful paintings in a series of styles including representational, abstract, and a surreal combination of the two.

[8] Painting was the miracle, the final act of defiance through which I exorcised the pain and reclaimed my sense of place, my moral compass, and my love for life.

A reviewer said the show was "bursting at the seams with chromatic energy, kinetic form, and optical intensity" and added, "His paintings, pastels, and photographs bear witness to multitudinous sites of inspiration.

It featured an enormous painting, "City with a River Running Through," which a reviewer called "a cartographical tour-de-force, depicting, from multiple perspectives, a cityscape made up of an abstract patchwork of colors, patterns, and shapes."

The paintings shown ranged from pure abstracts to figurative works, some showing surreal juxtapositions and hinting at what the reviewer called "dreamlike fables.

"[12] Writing in Hyperallergic, a critic saw in them "oceanic migration narratives" and "references to the 19th-century Amistad ship captives" as well as fishing and other maritime activities.

[15] This critic also noted paintings that recalled patterned textiles, musical instruments, and religious motifs and added that the works instilled a "sense of quietude" and provided a "glimpse into the intimate worldview of an artist dedicated to representing the abundance of his surroundings.

"[15] A New Yorker magazine critic said the paintings "give order to the chaos of displacement, and communicate what it feels like to live in both natural and man-made worlds, in which bodies of water, airplanes, and lone brown figures coexist in a kind of dreamscape.

She wrote that he "created an autonomous universe through the flattened picture planes, in which figures, fish, trees and geometric patterns jostle against one another in freewheeling abandon."

"[1][15][16] One critic cited influences from the "land, cultures and social realities of the Horn of Africa," as well as sources in European and abstract American art.

[14] Another said, "Operating fluidly between abstraction and figuration, Ghebreyesus' matte acrylic and oil paintings suggest the non-linear form of dreams, memories, and storytelling.

[17] A large painting of about 2002 called "Zememesh Berhe's Magic Garden" (shown at left) combines African motifs in brightly colored realist and abstract design elements.

"[15] Early in his career he described himself as a "conscious syncretizer", saying he created art as a means of exorcising the pain of his exile from his war-torn homeland and of reclaiming his "sense of place," his "moral compass," and his "love for life.

Framed by Eritrean crafts, textiles and architecture; the polyglot influence of world literature and philosophies; BeBop, modern jazz and polyrhythms of the African diaspora; as well as the masterworks of paintings populating the museums Ghebreyesus frequented, [his paintings] offer a survey of the myriad styles, mediums and scales that he worked in over his career.

Operating fluidly between abstraction and figuration, Ghebreyesus’ matte acrylic and oil paintings suggest the non-linear form of dreams, memories, and storytelling.

Momentarily recognisable figures dissolve into colourful patterns: a school of fish becomes human bodies in transit or a boat emerges from brightly hued woven shapes echoing Eritrean textiles.

[18] Mr. Ghebreyesus’s appetitive colors makes his art instantly magnetic, but it is his images — boats, animals, musical instruments, angels — that write stories in the mind.