Lucid visions into a world of vital Force. A life truth permeated with the magic reality of Africa. This is what Skunder Boghossian, one of Ethiopia's most important young painters, presents in The Nourishers. Combining a sense of fantasy with a wealth of detail, Skunder paints bursts of thought in a new spirit of Surrealism to give us, in totality, a profound statement of his Afro-Metaphysics.
We see the figures, painted with graphic precision and a dexterity of line, speaking to each other sensually in a dialogue of organic force. With the connections between these symbols of origin, linked together in movements of fertility, creativity, and sustenance, Skunder firmly establishes Man in his living function with the forces of Nature.
Examining these figures more closely, we see that Skunder has a painting vocabulary of specific patterns, ranging from the insectish (‘Primordial Effort’) and the bird and fish-like (‘The Jugglers’, ‘Feeding’) to the skeletal and physiological structure, (‘Birth’, ‘The Eternal Offering’ , Etc.) In their original significance, these figures heighten the sensuousness and lend power to the nourishing theme.
The insect and fish, in numerous mythologies, are archetypal representatives of the Great Mother or fertility. The use of the skeletal figures is a further extension of Skunder's Afro-Metaphysics and the Eternal Circle (which always appears in African mythologies as the Uroboros or snake biting its tail, again a symbol of the Feminine principle. See ‘Interior Structure’). This Circle has no beginning and no end. There is a constant metamorphosis of life into death which becomes re-birth and life again; thus we see, in his work, the skeletal figure giving birth to and nourishing the foetus. The ever present egg, an integral part of this painting vocabulary, insists on the rhythmical continuity of life. The internal physiological structures point to the origin of bodily functions or the source of Man's physical life; thus the symbolic umbilical cord which enables the forces of Nature to pass into and replenish the Being of man.
Skunder's vocabulary, however, is not one of mild comments. He is bold. He exclaims. He affirms. He shouts, sometimes violently; and in all we see a total engagement of the artist with his expression.
Technically, this young painter has probably been influenced more by African Art and Western technique than by Coptic art of Ethiopia; although in certain paintings some decorative motifs and formal structures are Byzantine in feeling. His constructions are concise, the well planned diffusion of light and colour resulting in a hierarchy of forms. The African totem designs and masks are seen particularly in ‘Fertility Goddess’, ‘The Possession of the Red Balloon’, and in the gouache, ‘The Life Giver’.
His textures, slightly porous, remind one of the substance of soil or the bark of a tree. His forms, vegetative, seem as if they had been planted, growing from the earth. Although these forms contribute to the unity of an entire canvas, they do not have to remain stationary or dependent on the whole work for existence. If one wishes to remove specific forms from a composition, one sees that they can live independently by virtue of their sculptures perfection. Skunder has thought. Skunder has felt. His work reveals beliefs, emotions and unmistakable talent in the dynamic plastic of a style, distinctly his own.
