Bram Bogart

Bram Bogart (born Abraham van den Boogaart) was a painter born on July 12, 1921, in Delft, the Netherlands, who later became a Belgian citizen and left a lasting mark on postwar abstract art. The son of a blacksmith, he trained as a decorator at a technical school and took a correspondence course in drawing on the side. After the war, the twenty-five-year-old painter settled in Paris, where he became one of the founders of Art Informel, initially experimenting with cubism and figurative subjects like flowers, still lifes, and self-portraits.

It was during the 1950s that he shifted toward impasto, building up thick layers of boldly applied, colorful paint into an increasingly abstract, expressionist style. He spent time in Rome between 1958 and 1960, where color became a central concern of his work. In 1961 he and his wife Leni settled permanently in Belgium, and he became a Belgian citizen in 1969. There, he began experimenting with a more three-dimensional medium — a mix of mortar, siccative, powdered chalk, varnish, and raw pigment — applied to large, heavy wooden backing structures, giving his surfaces their distinctive sculptural, tactile quality.

He went on to represent Belgium at the 1971 Venice Biennale, and his work now sits in the collections of institutions including the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent, and Tate Modern in London. Bogart died on May 2, 2012, in Sint-Truiden, Belgium, at the age of 90. His heavily worked, richly textured surfaces remain influential within postwar European abstraction, and his paintings continue to be exhibited and collected internationally.

www.ftn-books.com has several Bogart items available.