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1 Alexander Boguslawski was born in Warsaw, Poland. He is a graduate of Warsaw's prestigious High School of Fine Arts, where in addition to a strenuous academic curriculum he received five years of formal instruction in painting, sculpture, composition, and art history. Following his graduation, he attended the University of Warsaw, and received his MA degree in Russian Language and Literature; his Master's thesis focused on the relationship between literature and art. In 1977, he emigrated to the United States and in 1982 received his PhD in Russian Literature and Language from the University of Kansas. In 1983, he joined the faculty of Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. As a full professor, he teaches courses in Russian language, literature. history, culture, folklore, and film, as well as the humanities courses offered at Rollins' widely acknowledged Hamilton Holt School. In the spring of 2005 he was awarded an Arthur Vining Davis Fellowship in recognition of his scholarship and teaching excellence. Professor Boguslawski's History of Russian Painting Website is an ongoing collaboration with his students, and is generally considered one of the best resources on Russian painting on the Internet; it is listed among the Encyclopedia Britannica Russian art on-line references. In time free from teaching duties, lecturing, and scholarship, he creates his intricate paintings, products of years of reading and research in literature, art history, folklore, folktales, fairy tales, and mythology. They are made in a unique style which is derived from Byzantine and Russian icon painting and the art of the naive painters. The main features of this combination of styles are bright, pure colors, a "reared up" point of view, the dominant narrative element (each painting is a story), and the academic technique which employs the application of thin layers of oil paint to achieve a smooth surface without visible brushstrokes or texture on the canvas. There are some common elements one can find in Boguslawski's paintings. One is using human heads, faces or profiles as inhabited structures in his imaginary cities. The faces are often Byzantine in style, but with more three-dimensionality than in Byzantine art. Another is the presence of balloons or dirigibles in many compositions. These decorative constructions enliven the upper part of the canvas, often being a part of the developing story. Frequently, the clouds and the sky are created as a fitting complement to the joyous balloons or as a reference to cosmic or historical continuity or interruption. The paintings offer the viewers multiple possibilities of interpretation; the creation of the story is often a subtext for philosophical speculations by each viewer. The viewer's imagination is drawn into an exploration of the elements of the painting and encouraged to shift from pure imagination to contemplation of truths concerning history, nature, and humanity. The final challenge to our conception of the individual vis-a-vis our collective consciousness is the artist's incorporation of the "signature," consisting usually of his initials (A.B.), and the date of the painting's completion into the image, which makes it quite difficult to find; the signature never attracts the attention of the viewer the way signatures of other painters do. Actually, in many cases, finding the signature becomes a challenge for the viewer--a test of his or her gift of observation. Each painting takes up to 800 hours to complete. In many instances, paintings reflect the interests and lives of the collectors, and in addition to their semi-biographical nature are intended to be journeys of discovery to be embarked upon many times by both the owners and the viewers. In recent years, however, the artist has restricted his use and representation of the owners' lives, first and foremost because life in the modern world is unpredictable and family histories change dramatically over the years. Because of the time involved in completing each canvas, Boguslawski's works are primarily shown either in retrospective exhibitions or as a part of an exhibition of several artists. Outside of Florida, the artist's works are owned by collectors in Connecticut, Indiana, Kansas, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and abroad, in Greece, Poland, and Switzerland. Exhibitions:
Olin Library,Rollins College -- December 1987 Reproductions of paintings:
Lakeland Magazine, Fall 2006, p. 91, 95, 96. Contact the artist:
aboguslawski@rollins.edu |