Collection: Alexander Skunder Boghossian

Of Armenian-Ethiopian heritage, Alexander Skunder Boghossian (Born 1937, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - Died 2003, Washington DC, USA) trained in London and Paris. After an influential teaching stint at Addis Ababa's School of Fine Arts (1966-9), he moved to the United States in 1970, later becoming a painting professor at Howard University (1972 - 2001).

Interested in Pan-Africanism and Négritude, he incorporated elements from diverse geographies and time periods - both African and non-african - into his paintings, some made on barkcloth or hide. The symbolic and formal elements of Ethiopian Orthodox narrative painting and talismanic imagery were particularly influential, remixed into surrealist explorations of two-dimensional surfaces. 

He remarked in an interview with Lodie Robinson in 1972 that "one must mystically interpret my paintings, for they translate reality by using images of the non-real". 

Source: African artists - Phaidon