Sergei Bongart
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20th Century Russian painter Sergei Bongart (1918-1985) was born in Kiev in the Ukraine. He studied art in Kiev, Prague, Vienna and Munich, before emigrating to the United States in 1948. While living in California during the 1960s and 70s, he taught a number of aspiring young painters who later became well-known, nationally collected American artists—among them, Susan Greaves and James Dudley Slay. Bongart lived, painted and taught in Idaho and then in California, where he established the Sergei Bongart School of Art and administered it for many years.
Bongart is admired for his richly colored and emotionally expressive landscapes, still lifes and portraits. He was best known as a colorist, working in exaggerated color, using dynamic but carefully controlled color relationships and extolling the virtues of approaching painting as “color first, subject last." His work is featured in prominent museums, and has received many awards, including a 1982 Gold Medal from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame for his oil painting entitled "Spring Evening."
The only book written to date about Bongart is entitled simply, Sergei Bongart. The book was written by Mary Balcomb and designed by Norman Nason.
[edit] External links
Sergei Bongart: Notes on Painting