Oleksandr Bohomazov

Oleksandr Bohomazov

Oleksandr Bohomazov was a Ukrainian graphic artist, painter, educator, and art theorist. He was a leading figure in both Ukrainian and global avant-garde movements. Bohomazov made his mark in the history of Ukrainian art as one of the founders of national Cubo-Futurism. 

The artist was born in 1880 into a bookkeeper’s family in the Kharkiv Governorate. He attended a gymnasium and pursued a degree in agronomy at his father’s insistence. Encouraged by his uncle, he would go on plein air painting trips with him. 

Bohomazov initially planned to enroll in the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts but in 1902 decided to attend the Kyiv Art School, where he met Oleksandra Exter and Oleksandr Archipenko. He studied under Oleksandr Murashko and Ivan Seleznyov and also attended private studios in Moscow.

Bohomazov lived and worked in Kyiv. In 1913, he married Kyiv-based artist Wanda Monastyrska, who became his muse throughout his life and artistic career. 

In 1915, he moved to the Caucasus, which turned out to be a disappointment for the artist due to financial difficulties and limited social interactions. However, the experience inspired many of his paintings. 

Starting in 1917, he began teaching. From 1922 to 1930, Bohomazov served as a professor at the Kyiv Art Institute (now the National Academy of Visual Arts and Architecture). 

Bohomazov passed away in 1930. Shortly after his death, his name and artistic legacy were erased from the Soviet-era historical narrative. Only during the cultural "thaw" of the mid-1960s, his name and works were rediscovered by a group of art historians.

Artwork Details

    • Location
    • Sumy, Ukraine
    • Dimensions
    • 59.5cm x 32.2cm
    • Years
    • 1907
    • Framing
    • No framed

Description

This painting belongs to the collection of the Nykanor Onatskyi Regional Art Museum in Sumy.

The painting "In a Rocking Chair" (1907) by the outstanding Ukrainian artist Oleksandr Bohomazov is not only one of the best works of the artist's early creative period but is also considered by experts to be a symbolic beginning of a new era in Ukrainian visual arts.

The artist was twenty-seven years old when he created this impressionistic work. The painting depicts a girl with a pure gaze from her large brown eyes. Her head, adorned with a lush light-brown hairstyle, is compositionally integrated into the outline of the backrest of a wide rocking chair. As she swings, seemingly responding to some call of nature—birds or the gentle rustle of leaves—she turns towards the window, and the warm morning sunlight illuminates her face, gently brushing her hair with a yellow glimmer like a bird. This effect was achieved through the successful placement of the model in an interior with directed lighting from the right.

The artist seems to have peered into a barely perceptible everyday aspect of life: the inner state of the model and her transcendental world. The face is rendered through pastel gradations of light blue-silver half-tones within a transparent air mass, utilizing a textured, fine dot brushstroke and a thoughtful color palette.

The painter illusionistically conveys the vibration of the light-air atmosphere of the work. The textured manner of pointillism and the “alla prima” technique, particularly characteristic of French Neo-Impressionists, capture the changing air environment while being adequate to the rich "palette" of human emotions (in this case, of the model and the artist). 

The piece is extraordinarily musical. Seven colors of the spectrum resonate with seven notes, primarily forming a textured melody of a sonata. The girl seems to sway to a certain musical rhythm. These aspects of painting techniques were programmatic in the works of French Impressionists and their followers.

*Museum Director N.Yurchenko

In a Rocking Chair

1907, Painting, Oil, Cardboard, Canvas , Impressionism

Digitized using

in ultra-high resolution Digital Original artwork from original painting, authenticity and quality was verified by the gallery curators & artist.

  • Resolution:
    400 MPX (23296 x 17472 px)
  • Color depth:

    16 bit 281 Trillion Colors

  • Original file size:

    1538 MB DNG File

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