UMUC Diaspora Dialogue Exhibition, 2013

Page 34

ALEXANDER “SKUNDER” BOGHOSSIAN

Much is known about the life and achievement of an artist as well known as Skunder Boghossian: the fact that he was the first African artist to be collected by the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris; the fact that he went on to be collected by four other museums; the fact that he was a product of the Beaux Arts School of Paris; the fact that as a very impressionable young man, a teenager actually, he lived in Paris and was influenced by Diop and the emerging Negritude movement, Lam and the Caribbean view of the world, and in almost daily contact with Klee, Breton, Braque, and Ernst. Independent Africa and a world beyond the European American axis was taking center stage and the performance was in Paris. Skunder was there as a willing and eager observer/participant. . . . Skunder was nothing if not experimental . . . William Karg Owner, Contemporary African Art Gallery, New York

Union, 1966, oil on canvas, 75 x 49¼ in., Collection of the Boghossian Family

32


Issuu converts static files into: digital portfolios, online yearbooks, online catalogs, digital photo albums and more. Sign up and create your flipbook.