Alexander “Skunder” Boghossian (1937-2003)

 The New York Times, reporting the artist’s death in 2003, described Boghossian as “an artist who played an important role in introducing European modernist styles into Africa and who, as a longtime resident of the United States, became one of the best-known African modern artists in the West.” It is quite likely that Boghossian would have objected to this description or at least to the danger of over-simplification. Elizabeth Giorgis, a contributing editor for Ethiopian Register, writing about an interview she had with Boghossian, stated: 

His conversations allude to the cultural universe of Third world dependency where creativity as well as culture, history and pride has been pulled along in the whirligig of European meaningless behavior. To him, people of color through no fault of their own but through the systematic destruction of their culture, have imitated everything European and have despised traditional culture and race while they fail to understand their own true needs. 

Perhaps it would have been more accurate to say that Boghossian used the knowledge of European artistic styles he discovered while in Paris when he returned to Ethiopia in the mid 1960s to express his true Ethiopian self, and in doing this, taking great care not to hide his true identity with the mask of a stranger. 

Skunder Boghossian was born in Ethiopia in 1937. He received a government scholarship in 1955 to study art at St. Martin’s School, Central School, and the Slade School of Fine Arts in London. In 1957 he moved to Paris where he studied and taught at L’École des Beaux Arts and L’Académie de la Grande Chaumiere. 

In Paris, his artistic style was shaped by his personal experiences and the accumulation of his knowledge of modern Western art. He worked closely with African American artists and was influenced by the works of Paul Klée, André Breton, Georges Braques, and Max Ernst, as well as Afro-Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam and West African and Coptic art. His work incorporates diverse techniques and media with vibrant color, symbols, and motifs. Boghossian described all of his work as “a perpetual celebration of the diversity of blackness.” Boghossian met Marilyn Pryce in Paris who was originally from Tuskegee, Alabama and was the daughter of artist/landscape architect, Edward Pryce. The two were married in 1966 in Tuskegee, and later divorced in 1970. 

Boghossian was an influential teacher in Paris, Ethiopia, and at Howard University’s School of Fine Arts (1974-2000). He was the first contemporary African artist to have his work purchased by the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1963. The Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired his painting Juju’s Wedding (1964) in 1966, and the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of African Arts acquired several of his paintings in 1992. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Studio Museum in Harlem; Howard University, Washington DC; Merton Simpson Gallery, NY; and Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. The exhibition, Ethiopian Passages: Dialogues in the Diaspora, opened in 2003 at the Museum of the National Center for Afro American Artists, Boston, MA, just days before Boghossian’s death. 

Rosalind Jeffries, regarding the exhibition held at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1972, wrote: 

Skunder has continually evolved in the past under the influence of African philosophy and mythology. There is one certain thing about his creations: they are pregnant with energy. His canvases bear witness to energy and force at a fantastic range of intensity, or vibrations. The energy is sometimes overpowering, violent, sometimes a mere frenzy, sometimes calm, sometimes a lyrical clear melody, but always in perpetual motion. These forces are not only inner forces but they relate to outer moons, suns, air, atmosphere, shifting patterns and images derived from Ethiopian sacred and folk art used throughout the centuries.