Alexander Skunder Boghossian, born in Ethiopia in 1937, rose to prominence at the age of 17 when he won second prize for his painting at Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie I’s Jubilee Anniversary Celebration. The following year, he was awarded a scholarship to study at St. Martin’s School and the Slade School of Fine Art in London, England.
He later relocated to Paris, France, where he studied and taught at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere for nine years. While in Paris, he met African artists and intellectuals associated with the Negritude movement. He also came across the work of French surrealists.
Some of the artists who influenced Boghossian include Paul Klee, Roberto Matta, and the Afro-Cuban artist Wilfredo Lam.
Boghossian returned to Ethiopia in 1966 to teach at the School of Fine Arts in Addis Abeba. He immigrated to the United States in 1970 and was hired as a professor at Howard University in Washington, D.C. two years later.
His work, which has been described as “a perpetual celebration of the diversity of blackness,” has been shown in museums around the world, including the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Boghossian was the first African artist whose work was purchased by the Museum of Modern Art.
Alexander Skunder Boghossian died in Washington, D.C. on May 6, 2003, within days of the opening of an exhibit of his work titled “Ethiopian Passages: Dialogues in the Diaspora.”