Skunder Boghossian was born into a mixed-heritage family of Ethiopian and Armenian parentage in Addis Ababa, Italian East Africa (now Ethiopia) in 1937. In 1955, Boghossian arrived in England to study art at the Slade School of Fine Art, St Martin's School of Art, and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Boghossian’s body of work established his reputation as an influential Ethiopian African modernist painter. Skunder Boghossian died in Washington DC, USA in 2001.
Artist and academic, Skunder Boghossian was born into a mixed-heritage family; his mother, Ethiopian, and his father, Armenian, in Addis Ababa, Italian East Africa (now Ethiopia) in 1937. Boghossian’s mother, Sedale-Wolde Teklewas, and his father, Kosrof Gorgorios Boghossian, faced political upheaval that significantly impacted the family. Boghossian’s father was a member of Emperor Haile Selassie’s elite Ethiopian Imperial Army, serving as a colonel in the Kebur Zabagna, who were instrumental in various Ethiopian military actions that fought against Italian occupation. Boghossian’s father faced imprisonment for his anti-Italian military actions, when his son was only one, and Boghossian’s mother had no option but to relocate her young family and to provide their survival without her husband. Consequently, Boghossian and his sibling lived in the care of maternal relatives, who ensured he received a good standard of education while his father remained imprisoned for seven years.
Boghossian’s primary and secondary education included learning the ancient Ethiopian biblical script, Geʽez, a first-century text used by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, before Christianity had reached northern Europe. Boghossian was academically bright and multilingual; his mother tongue was Amharic, and he was fluent in his father’s Armenian language, as well as French and English. In the 1950s, Boghossian directed his studies towards his creative talents, whilst attending Teferi Mekonnen School (TMS), founded by Haile Selassie I (now Teferi Mekonnen Polytechnic College. (TMPTC)). There Boghossian's painting skills excelled under the tutelage of Latvian art teacher and painter, Stanislaw Chojnacki, a leading expert in Ethiopian art history and iconography (Pankhurst and Pankhurst, 2011, p.218) and French Canadian philosopher and painter, Jacques Goubet (Jegede, 2009, p.32). According to Dele Jegede, ‘Goudbet opened Boghossian's eyes to the need to allow the painting to emerge without being forced’ (Jegede, 2009, p.32). In 1954, Boghossian’s artwork won second place in the Haile Selassie I Jubilee Anniversary celebration, and in the following year, 1955, he received a scholarship to travel to Europe (Cotter, 2003, online).
In 1955, Boghossian arrived in London, England to study art at the Slade School of Fine Art, St Martin's School of Art, and the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Boghossian’s art school training in postwar England enabled him to develop his fine art practice through classes in still life drawing, painting, and composition, allowing him to engage with a range of media and personal experimentation. Although Boghossian spent only a brief time in England, this experience laid a solid foundation for his painting repertoire and helped establish his reputation as an important African modernist painter.
Boghossian left England in 1957 for Paris, France to continue his art studies at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. He became inspired by African art, the jazz scene, political activism, and leading Black political figures and Pan-Africanist theorists, whose work sought to challenge hostile acts of colonial racism and empower the oppressed, such as the poet Aimé Césaire, scientist Cheikh Anta Diop, and political philosopher, Franz Fanon (Bonhams, online, nd). In 1965, his artwork was featured in the Fourth Biennale in Paris, and that same year, the Museum of Modern Art in New York added the painting Ju-Ju’s Wedding (1964), to its African art collection. By 1966, Boghossian left Paris to return to Ethiopia to teach at Addis Ababa School of Fine Arts and, while in Ethiopia, in 1967, he won the Haile Selassie First Prize for Fine Arts. Boghossian’s artwork was exhibited in London at the Camden Arts Centre in 1969, along with Ibrahim El-Salahi and other contemporary African artists.
In 1970, Boghossian left Ethiopia to travel to the USA to teach, first at the Atlanta Center for Black Art, then in 1972, at Howard University, Washington DC. Boghossian’s paintings continued to reflect his political awareness and the influences of Swiss-German modernist/surrealist, Paul Klee, combining cosmic, mystical, and surrealist imagery that presented artistic rebellion through the use of overt African symbolism and motifs. In The Big Orange (1971), Boghossian fills the canvas with the rich red and orange tones of Ethiopian soil, creating a surreal abstracted painting. Amid the cosmic orbs and swirls emerge zoomorphic imagery: birds, serpents, horned beasts, supernatural beings, and symbols associated with Ethiopian mythology. In Ancient Fog (1975), an aerial view of a surreal landscape composed of African savannah and riverine environments, geometric boundaries in green, blue, and copper-red tones, ancient trails, tent encampments, and rural compounds, sits under an imagined sky, with luminous yellow sun, a sliver of blue, swirling white clouds, and thick grey-and-brown fog. It is a conceptualisation drawing on both African metaphysics and cosmology.
Boghossian received numerous awards and exhibited internationally during his lifetime. Skunder Boghossian died in Washington DC, USA in 2001. Posthumously, his work was exhibited in the exhibition, Nigerian Modernism at Tate Modern, London (2025-26). His work is not represented in the UK public domain.
Joy Onyejiako.