Painter · Ethiopia
Skunder Boghossian
Alexander "Skunder" Boghossian (1937–2003) was an Ethiopian painter, a founder of Ethiopian modernism and one of the first contemporary African artists to win international attention. After studying in London and living in Paris, he returned to teach in Addis Ababa and then spent three decades at Howard University in Washington. In 1965 the Museum of Modern Art bought one of his paintings, the first by a contemporary African artist.
Updated 2 min read
Skunder Boghossian was born in Addis Ababa in 1937; his father was of Armenian descent and his mother Ethiopian. After studying in London between 1955 and 1957, at St Martin's, the Central School and the Slade, he moved to Paris, where he spent nearly a decade; the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris bought his work in 1963. There he met the writers of Négritude, the surrealists and artists such as the Cuban painter Wifredo Lam, and developed his own visionary style: swirling, cosmic compositions in which forms from Ethiopian magic scrolls, church paintings and crosses meet African sculpture and surrealist imagery.
In 1966 he returned to Ethiopia and taught at the School of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa, for three years according to one source and five according to another, where his experimental approach influenced a generation of students and set him apart from the more classical Afewerk Tekle. He then moved to the United States and taught painting at Howard University in Washington, D.C., for some thirty years, becoming a central figure for African and African American artists there.
The Museum of Modern Art in New York had bought his work in 1965, according to Wikipedia the painting Juju's Wedding (1964), the first purchase of a painting by a contemporary African artist, and his paintings are now in museums across the United States, Europe and Africa. He died on 4 May 2003, aged 65, at Howard University Hospital in Washington, DC. Sources date his Howard teaching variously from 1972 or 1974 until 2001, and his obituary gives twenty-nine years on the faculty. The Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art acquired his work in 1992. Bonhams and Sotheby's have offered his paintings at auction, and their catalogue notes are a good further source on his style. See Ethiopian art and our list of Ethiopian artists.
