Background
Abraham van den Boogaart was born on July 12, 1921 in Delft, the Netherlands, the son of Abraham van den Boogaart, a blacksmith.
Abraham van den Boogaart was born on July 12, 1921 in Delft, the Netherlands, the son of Abraham van den Boogaart, a blacksmith.
His parents did not welcome their son’s desire to become a painter and sent him to a technical school to become a decorator. During evenings Bogart was allowed to follow a correspondence course in drawing.
During 1937-1939 Bogart worked as a commercial artist for an advertising agency in Rotterdam. During the Second World War, Bogart went into hiding to avoid forced labour for the German army, and managed to paint a series of low-key Dutch landscapes.
After the liberation in 1945, Bogart started to develop his first rough-textured first wall-like landscapes, and joined the ranks of artists of the ‘Art Informel’, a term referring to a loosely knit group practicing different forms of Abstraction. Bogart was not interested in gestural painting, brushed or poured from cans, and pursued the desire to build up his paintings in layers of pigment and cement mixture.
During the 1950s Bogart settled in Paris for almost a decade and explored the possibilities of monochrome figurative paintings in the manner of Jean Dubuffet. It was his Parisian dealer that suggested the name Bram Bogart. In 1957 Bogart showed for the first time in the UK, as part of an Arts Council touring exhibition, and held his own among a group that included Dubuffet, the Canadian abstract expressionist Jean-Paul Riopelle, the French Tachiste Pierre Soulages, and Karel Appel, Bogart's compatriot and a member of the Cobra group (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam). In 1958 Bogart had his first solo show in London, at the Gimpel Fils gallery.
During 1958-1960 Bogart spent time in Rome, where he adopted colour. In 1960 Bogart moved to Belgium, first to Brussels, then to Ohain, in the province of Walloon Brabant. He took Belgian citizenship in 1969. During these years, Bogart ‘s paintings became incredibly thickly built up with layers of pigment mixed with water, varnish, siccative and powdered chalk, to resemble building blocks. Bogart had to devise his own metal stretchers to bear the weight of his work. For some artists, the material is an added value, but for Bogart the material is the value itself.
Bogart's art entered collections all over Europe and was shown worldwide at museums including the Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Guggenheim in New York, the Louvre and Pompidou Centre in Paris. Following Bogart’s passing in January 2012, The Cobra Museum, Amsterdam paid a long-awaited tribute to the ‘Master of Matter’, with a large retrospective show (September 2012 - January 2013). Two year ago, Tate modern bought three works.
Blau-Wit
1997Blauwomgeel
1967Day Break
1997Des Briques
1959Fete des Tirlantijnen
Gebroken Wit
Geelblauw
High Society
1960Juli
2002Kruis Wit Zwart
1965La vie du visible
Lechapeauderubens
1983Lenasgarden
1983L'Inconnu
Noir
2006Noordbodem
1961Publicholidays
1989Roodvlakkengroen
1965Silence
1957So Beautiful
2006Treize Jaune
Untitled
White et Rosé
2010Yellow & Green
1962He married to Leni in 1958. They had three children: Cornelia, Inge and Bram.