Skunder Boghossian
Ethiopian, born 1937
Night Flight of Dread and Delight, 1964
Oil on canvas with collage
56 5/8 x 62 5/8 in.
Lent by North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh,
purchased with funds from the North Carolina Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest)

Boghossian's artistic sensibilities are rooted in Ethiopian history and culture, but they grow out of his experiences with art and artists from Europe and Africa while living in Paris and the United States. In Paris, he was influenced by the work of Paul Klee, Roberto Matta and Wilfredo Lam, a Cuban artist of African descent. Boghossian's paintings, such as Night Flight of Dread and Delight, like those of Lam, seem surreal and abstract, but they contain fragments of Ethiopian cultural practice, imagery and memory. Boghossian uses symbolic images, fantastic animal and bird forms and occasional references to Ethiopian language or traditional weaving techniques. He speaks of a practice called tilflif, a complex braid-design motif often found in Coptic painting, which may explain the layering of patterns and images found in his work. Boghossian has found in modernism a language for expressing his personal vision, but his own identity is clearly rooted in Ethiopian culture.