Artist 101

1.

The Early Years

Alexander "Skunder" Boghossian was born on the 22nd of July 1937 in Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia. His Armenian father, Kosrof Gorgorios Boghossian, was a colonel in the Ethiopian Imperial Guard, while his mother, Weizero Tsedale Wolde Tekle, was Ethiopian. Skunder was raised by his uncle, Kathig Boghossian, who was assistant minister of agriculture, as his father was in prison for a time due to his participation in the resistance against the Italian occupation, and his mother, although present in his life, had chosen to live away from the family.

Skunder started dabbling in painting early, learning informally at the Teferi Mekonnen School. When he was a teenager, an African American neighbour introduced him to jazz, which would become very important in his practice, always playing in the background in his studio as he painted. This music style was a key symbol for him, conceptually, aesthetically and even politically. He felt that jazz was "a very heavy movement of the 20th century. It is not one person, it is not one thought, it is a combination of geniuses... The constant modulation of concepts... It is the one thing we have, black folks, as artists.”

In 1955, he was awarded a scholarship by the Ethiopian government to study art in Europe, and he spent two years in London at Central Saint Martins College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art.

2.

Living in Paris

Skunder moved to Paris in 1957 to study at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. His arrival coincided with the pinnacle of the movement for African liberation and independence, a period during which a vibrant debate about the birth of African modernism was taking place. Like many African artists and intellectuals living in Paris in the 1960s, Skunder was quickly struck by the decolonisation movement, and his encounters with pioneering activists like Aimé Césaire, one of the founders of the Négritude movement, Cheikh Anta Diop and Franz Fanon left a lasting mark in Skunder’s artistic and political outlook. In Paris he also encountered Paul Klee and the Cuban surrealist painter Wilfredo Lam, two artists who had a marked influence on his work.

It was during this period that Skunder began to work on one his most important series, The Nourishers, formed by 12 works out of which nine are presently unaccounted for and two are only available in photographic images. Parisian critics saw these works as examples of Surrealism, but while the creative potential of the unconscious and found objects were indeed important for him, he was also deeply invested in the power of material culture. He visited the Musée de l'Homme and examined the ways in which the art, the artifacts and the heritage from African cultures were being displayed, interpreted and exploited.

In 1963, he was the first Ethiopian painter whose work was purchased by Paris’ Musée d'Art Moderne. Another important work this period is Juju’s Night Flight of Dread and Delight (1964), a large, staggering composition in oil on canvas and collage that explores the tension between creation and destruction in shades of grey, beige, and ochre mixed with earthy hues.

3.

Iconography

In 1964, while still in Paris, Skunder painted JuJu's Wedding, a piece in tempera and metallic paint on cut-and-torn cardboard that was purchased by MoMA for its collection in 1965. JuJu's Wedding was also the first work where he used the imagery of “magical scrolls”: illuminated manuscripts created by the itinerant priests of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church called Debteras that featured Christian and non-Christian symbols and texts and whose purpose was to fend-off evil. This motif became a trademark of many of his later works, as was his interest in the West African spiritual belief system known as “juju”, in which objects like amulets, charms and spells are incorporated in religious practices.

Skunder returned to Ethiopia in 1966 to teach at the School of Fine Arts in Addis Ababa. Back home he delved even further in the iconography of Ethiopian Christian paintings and architectural forms, teasing out a dialogue between the Ethiopian Orthodox Church tradition and a vernacular vision of the modern world, as well as investigating the transcultural African influences on Ethiopian church paintings.

4.

Modernist Master

In 1969, Skunder moved to the United States to complete an artist residency at Atlanta University and to teach sculpture, painting and African design at the Atlanta Center for Black Art. His engagement with the Civil Rights movement was pronounced from the very beginning of his American period and had a huge impact on his work.

In 1972, at the height of the Black Power Movement, he moved to Washington D.C. to teach painting at Howard University, a position he held until the year 2000. At Howard, he collaborated with important artists-activists like Jeff Donaldson, founder of the AfriCOBRA movement. During the 1970s and the 1980s, Skunder showed his work extensively across the United States. Typical of this period are his pieces on bark cloth, a textile frequently used in burials in East African communities.

Despite living abroad, Skunder remained deeply engaged with socio-political events back at home. In 1974, a military junta overthrew the rule of Emperor Haile Selassie, instating a communist regime that ended in 1991, to which Skunder responded with a series of works exploring the repression and grief that dominated his country during the period.

Skunder remained active until his death in 2003, aged 65. However, despite a prolific, evolving body of work spanning four decades, for years his work was only shown and discussed in terms of his participation in the 1960s political movements, leaving aside his fascinating later production.

5.

On the Market

In keeping with the growth of the contemporary African art market on the international stage in the last five years, interest in the work of Skunder is also on the ascent. Not only are his works dazzling and gorgeous, combining modernism with African traditions in a way few artists have managed to do, but Skunder himself is also something of an icon: a trailblazer whose work entered the collections of New York’s MoMA and Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris in the 1960’s, paving the way for other contemporary Black African artists.

The 20 works on offer in the upcoming Modern & Contemporary African Art auction on 4 May in New York are a veritable treasure trove. They come from Skunder’s own family, directly from the artist’s estate, and are thus new to the market.

This wide selection also provides diverse price points for different types of collectors. Those discovering Skunder’s body of work and dipping their toes in his market for the first time can explore smaller works on paper such as Jungle Boogie or Shrouded Lady, colourful pieces on acrylic, ink, crayon and marker with estimates between $1,100 and 3,000. Red Sun, a stunning painting on goat skin from 1980, carries an estimate of $15,000 – 20,000.

Meanwhile, his works from the 1960s, of which there will be four available at the sale, are still the most coveted. In 2020, his 1963 oil on canvas L’Eternel sold for $150,075 in New York, while in 2019, his 1960s acrylic, gouache and air brush on panel painting Blue Composition sold for $175,075 in New York.

For more from our Modern & Contemporary African Art team, follow @bonhamsafrican on Instagram or contact giles.peppiatt@bonhams.com.