Alexander Konstantinovich Bogomazov
Ukraine, 19th – 20th Century

Alexander Bogomazov was born at Yampol’ in the Kharkov region of the Ukraine in 1880. He studied at the Kiev Art Institute from 1902 – 1911. He studied under V.K. Menk, A. A. Murashko and I.F. Seleznev and attended studio courses organized by Fedor Ivanovich Rerberg and Konstantin Fedorovich Yuon in Moscow. From 1914 – 1917, he worked at Heriusi in the northern Caucasus. In 1917, he returned to Kiev to teach until 1922 at the school of painting. He remained close to the Ukrainian Futurist style that revolved around Aleksandra Exter.

Bogomazov considered abstract painting as “pure painting” and concentrated on his idea of “four rhythmic forces.” Throughout his career, he mixed styles, Cubism and Futurism, readily switching from the figurative to the abstract. In his treatise Elements of Painting (unpublished, 1914), Bogomazov, at the same time as Malevich, defines the black square as “the total sum of all art symbols.” He thus became part of the avant garde group centered around Malevich, Pevsner, and Gabo and in 1927 was one of the founding members of the Association of Revolutionary Art in Ukraine. He participated in Agit-Prop, which was a revolutionary collaboration in the decoration of the city of Kiev.

More than just a painter or draftsman, Bogomazov proves to be a significant contributor to elaborating on the language of abstraction in modern art. He died in 1930 in Kiev from tuberculosis.

Bogomazov is listed in the Benezit Dictionary of Artists. He fell into relative obscurity until his work was exhibited in the Lowe Art Museum in Miami in 1983 and the Musee des Jacobins in Toulouse in 1991.