Skunder Boghossian

Boghossian died on May 4, 2003, at Howard University Hospital in Washington, DC. He was 65.

In 2001, Boghossian worked with Kebedech Tekleab on a commission called Nexus for the Wall of Representation at the Embassy of Ethiopia in Washington, D.C. The work is an aluminum relief sculpture (365 x 1585 cm) mounted on the granite wall of the embassy. Nexus includes decorative motifs, patterns and symbols from Ethiopian religious traditions including Christianity, Judaism, Islam and other indigenous spiritual practices incorporating symbolic scrolls and forms representing musical instruments, utilitarian tools, and regional flora and fauna.

In 1977, he became the first African to design a First Day Cover for a United Nations stamp. He was commissioned by the World Federation of United Nations Associations. His pen and ink drawing on the theme of "Combat Racism" for the cover and the accompanying stamp were issued on September 19, 1977.

The radical politics of Black Power and the Black Arts Movement in the United States can be seen and they seem to have inspired his paintings with coded and overt political themes, such as Black Emblem (1969), The End of the Beginning (1972), and DMZ (1975). His involvement with the Black Arts Movement impacted his work in more ways than just one. His earlier paintings depended on the combination of biomorphic forms and minutely detailed abstract notations, he populated the spaces of his new work with bold, polychomatic, geometric, and "African" motifs.

Boghossian met Marily Pryce in Paris, 1964, while she was studying cinematography. They were married in Tuskegee, Alabama, Pryce's hometown, but the marriage later ended in divorce. He had two children, Aida Mariam and Edward Addisu, a sister, and four grandchildren.

Boghossian was the first contemporary African artist to have his work purchased by the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1963. In 1965, the Museum of Modern Art in New York acquired his painting Juju's Wedding (1964).

Boghossian won second prize at the Jubilee Anniversary Celebration of Haile Selassie I in 1954. The next year he was granted a government scholarship which allowed him to travel to London to study at the Saint Martin's School of Art, Central School of Art and Design, and Slade School of Fine Art, and two years later to Paris, where he studied and taught at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts. After meeting artists and likeminded individuals like Leopold Sedar Sendhor and Madelaine Rousseux, Boghossian gained enough clout to be invited to participate in the Second Congress of Negro Artists and Writers in Rome. This along with his acclaim gained from his 1964 exhibition at the Galerie Lambert earned him an invitation to become a member of the avant-garde movement, Phase, which he left shortly to work with André Breton. In 1966 he returned home, teaching at Addis Ababa's School of Fine Arts until 1969. In 1970 he emigrated to the United States, first to Atlanta, where he became acquainted with the Black Arts Movement and taught at Atlanta's Center for Black Art, then he moved to Washington D.C., where he taught at Howard University from 1972 until 2001.

Alexander "Skunder" Boghossian (July 22, 1937 – May 4, 2003) was an Ethiopian-Armenian painter and art teacher. He spent much of his life living and working in the United States. He was one of the first, and by far the most acclaimed, contemporary Black artists from the African continent to gain international attention.

Boghossian was born on July 22, 1937, in Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, one and half years after the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. His mother, Weizero Tsedale Wolde Tekle, was Ethiopian. His father, Kosrof Gorgorios Boghossian, was a colonel in the Kebur Zabagna (Imperial Bodyguard) and of Armenian descent. Boghossian also has a sister, Aster Boghossian, and a half brother, Mulugeta Kassa.