Sergei Bongart

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20th Century Russian painter Sergei Bongart (1918-1985) was born in Kiev in Ukraine. He studied art in Kiev, Prague, Vienna and Munich, before emigrating to the United States in 1948. Bongart lived 6 years in Memphis, Tennessee, location of his sponsor. In 1954 he moved to Los Angeles where he founded an art school. 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 established an art school in Idaho in 1969. He lived half the year in Santa Monica, California and the other half in Idaho. Much of his art reflects the rustic settings which reminded him of his homeland.

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."

There are three books written to date about Bongart.