Alexander "Skunder" Boghossian, (Ethiopian, 1937-2003)
Union 75 x 49 3/16in (190.5 x 125cm), including frame 49 x 75
Union
signed and dated 'SKUNDER 66' (lower left)
oil on canvas laid down on board
75 x 49 3/16in (190.5 x 125cm), including frame
49 x 75
Provenance
The collection of the artist's family.
Exhibited
University of Maryland, Diaspora Dialogue, February 2013, illust pg32.
Skunder Boghossian's Nourishers series emerged in 1963 and the artist experimented with such style until his return to Ethiopia in 1966. Louise Atcheson, a Parisian art critic, wrote in 1963, when the Nourishers first appeared:
"Skunder's figures painted with graphic precision and a dexterity of line, rise vertically in totemic design, speaking to each other sensually in a dialogue of organic force."
Indeed, the vastness of heaven and its creature and the immense spatiality of mortals from the bush were represented in this series.
Made two years after his masterpiece painting, Juju's Flight of Delight and Terror (1964), Union is composed of similar forms of African symbolism and iconography. Clearly, Union depicts the same rich texture and opacity of the Nourishers series along with the series' elegance. The shimmering lights of objects, or spiritual energies, evoke vivid tensions. His friend Solomon Deressa called these images "the ingenious infusion of spirit into ostensibly prosaic objects." From the tangible world to its spiritual and supernatural parallel, images are fragmented even as they are simultaneously connected.
The colors, lines and shapes of Union invoke myth and magic, and most certainly, shows how Skunder was intrigued by the vernacular of African intellectual thought.
We are grateful to Professor Elizabeth Giorgis for her compilation of the above footnote.
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Union 75 x 49 3/16in (190.5 x 125cm), including frame 49 x 75
Union
signed and dated 'SKUNDER 66' (lower left)
oil on canvas laid down on board
75 x 49 3/16in (190.5 x 125cm), including frame
49 x 75
Provenance
The collection of the artist's family.
Exhibited
University of Maryland, Diaspora Dialogue, February 2013, illust pg32.
Skunder Boghossian's Nourishers series emerged in 1963 and the artist experimented with such style until his return to Ethiopia in 1966. Louise Atcheson, a Parisian art critic, wrote in 1963, when the Nourishers first appeared:
"Skunder's figures painted with graphic precision and a dexterity of line, rise vertically in totemic design, speaking to each other sensually in a dialogue of organic force."
Indeed, the vastness of heaven and its creature and the immense spatiality of mortals from the bush were represented in this series.
Made two years after his masterpiece painting, Juju's Flight of Delight and Terror (1964), Union is composed of similar forms of African symbolism and iconography. Clearly, Union depicts the same rich texture and opacity of the Nourishers series along with the series' elegance. The shimmering lights of objects, or spiritual energies, evoke vivid tensions. His friend Solomon Deressa called these images "the ingenious infusion of spirit into ostensibly prosaic objects." From the tangible world to its spiritual and supernatural parallel, images are fragmented even as they are simultaneously connected.
The colors, lines and shapes of Union invoke myth and magic, and most certainly, shows how Skunder was intrigued by the vernacular of African intellectual thought.
We are grateful to Professor Elizabeth Giorgis for her compilation of the above footnote.
Estimate
Time, Location
Auction House
