| Facts/Data
|
Birth
1918 (Kiev, Ukraine)
Death
1985 (Santa Monica, California)
Lived/Active
California/Idaho / Russian Federation
Often Known For
tonalist landscape, still life, and portrait painter, educator
Discussion Board
Would you like to discuss this artist?
AskART Discussion Boards
(1 Active)
Categories of Interest
Tonalism
|
|
 |
This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  An award-winning artist known as a colorist, Sergei Bongart worked in a
variety of media--oil, casein, watercolor, gouache and tempera--and did
a variety of subjects including portraits, landscapes, still lifes and
cowboys. He was also a highly influential teacher of drawing and
painting at his Sergei Bongart School of Art, which he opened in Santa
Monica, California in 1949 and operated for many years.
He was
born and raised in a small village in the Ukraine of Russia called Zhukovki, and
inherited his love of art from his father who was an art collector and
poet. When age sixteen, the young Bongart began art study at the
Art Academy of Kiev with Michael Yarovoy and Peter Kotov, well-known
Russian artists. Within two years, Bongart was getting
recognition including museum representation.
He left Russia in
the 1940s, traveled in Europe, and emigrated to the United States in
1948. He first lived in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was a
portraitist. In 1954, he moved to California, settling in Santa
Monica, and lived and painted there during the winter months. He explored western art to the extent that he
earned the nickname of "the cowboy from Kiev." In the summer, he
conducted summer workshops at his place in Rexburg, Idaho, where he had
twenty acres of land with a house and adjoining studio.
He wrote an article about the decline of art, which was published in Sergei Bongart by Mary Balcomb.
Bongart
was an associate member of the National Academy of Design, the American
Watercolor Society, England's Royal Society of Arts, and the National
Academy of Western Art.
He died in 1985 and was survived by his
wife, Patricia, and a host of students who formed the Sergei Bongart
Society to promote his work.
The first posthumous exhibition of his work was held December 1988 at the Bongart Studio in Santa Monica, California, by Patricia Bongart. Another exhibition was held the following year at San Juan Capistrano from September 12 to October 5, 1999.
Sources:
Mary Balcomb, 'Sergei Bongart', Southwest Art, March 2003
Gordon McClelland and Jay Last, California Watercolors 1850-1970
Additional information courtesy of Patricia LeGrande Bongart
|
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|