User:Mickjenk/sandbox

Boghossian also has 1 half brother, Mulugeta Kassa, which he had a very close bond with Kosrof's father, Gregorios Boghassian, an Armenian trader, had established a friendship with Emperor Menelik II and worked as a traveling ambassador in Europe on behalf of the Emperor

Boghossian also has a sister, Aster Boghossian, and a half brother, Mulugeta Kassa.

As a teenager, an African American neighbor not only gave him his first feedback on his drawings, but introduced him to jazz, and throughout his life jazz was often playing in the background as he worked on paintings. He claimed jazz to be "a very heavy movement of the twentieth 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...".

As a teenager, an African American neighbor not only gave him his first feedback on his drawings, but introduced him to jazz, and throughout his life jazz was often playing in the background as he worked on paintings. He claimed jazz to be "a very heavy movement of the twentieth 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...".

As a new artist with no formal training, Boghossian won second prize in an Ethiopian art exhibition organized in commemoration of Emperor Haile Selassie's Jubilee anniversary. The prize allowed Boghossian to pursue art in Europe in 1955. He spent two years in London, studying at St. Martin's School of Art, the Central School, and the Slide School of Fine Arts. After finding the British art culture to be too rigid and academic, he left for Paris in 1957 on the advice of one of his professors. He then enrolled at the Ecole National Supérieure des Beaux Arts studying muralism.

Paris
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.

Spirituality and Influences
Boghossian, like other African American artists at this time, balanced multiple cultural, spiritual, and ancestral identities. He incorporated many different religious symbols in both his life and in his work ranging from Christian, to African, to Santerian. He would often start his day sprinkling the house with St. Michael’s holy water, meditate, burn incense, and commune with the “jujus”, asking for forgiveness and blessings. He once refused to work in a studio while creating his piece for the Ethiopian embassy because an assistant began working before he could communicate with the “jujus.” His use of these faiths was not a religious one, but a secular resepecting of his ancestors, who hailed from both Armenia and Ethiopia. Using imagery from däbtära magic scrolls, he utilizes a composition he calls “quflfu,” or the “interlocked.” This is a composition of interlacing and interweaving images and textures. This composition also mirrors Ethiopian craftsmanship like baskets and the cultural dress, the tebab. Boghossian would also directly use these däbtära scrolls, scraping the original image off to leave only a shadow of what was once on it. He would then use these remaining impressions to create more vibrant works, repurposing the scrolls.

Substance abuse combined with his spirituality also was the generator for many of his works. The Metamorphoses, a visualization of Franz Kafka’s, The Metamorphosis, is a perfect example of the combination of the two. Often after a drinking binge, Boghossian would create visceral, gripping works between the battle of good and evil. This is seen in The Metamorphoses with the evil spirit pulling him towards alcohol, and his good spirit urging him to stop. This conflict is a common theme in many of his works.

Notable works

 * Night Flight of Dread and Delight 1964
 * Axum 1967
 * The End of the Beginning 1973
 * African Images 1980
 * Time Cycle III 1981
 * The Metamorphoses 1982
 * Jacob’s Ladder 1984
 * Nexus 2001

Education and career[edit]
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.