The Israeli artist Alexander Bogen is Internationally known and respected as a versatile painter and a great colorist. His original pieces – from his black and white drawings to his figurative and abstract works – were presented in museums and galleries all over the world: from France, Germany and Poland to the United States, Mexico and Brazil and in Israel of course. In every exhibition, Bogen got his share of enthusiastic praises from the art critics side as well as the local crowd. Along side his activity as an original independent artist, Bogen was a great contributor to Israeli young artistic scene and established the arts unit in Vizo-Zarfat high school in Tel aviv.

Alexander Bogen was born in January 1916 in city of Durpat, Estonia. Both his parents were practicing medicine; his father was a sibling of a Jewish family of well known intellectuals, while his mother was the daughter of the famous rabbi Tuvia of the city Wolkovysk, Belarus – a highly respected Jewish religious figure.

When he was two years old baby, the Bogen family left to Vilnlius, where he was raised and got his education. As a young boy, he accepted the values of the Yiddish culture of “Yerushalyim De’Lita” (Jerusalem of Lithuania), as well as the modern Polish culture.

When World War II broke out, Bogen left to the forests of Belarus, and fought the Nazis as a partisans unit’s commander. Despite of the harsh conditions of the battlefield, Bogen never gave up his passion for art and was drawing the scene around him on every piece of paper he put his hands of. This authentic collection of works that survived the war is unique and irreplaceable. There’s no wonder that the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington decided to purchase some of these pieces to be safely preserved and exhibited for the future generations.

After the war has ended, Bogen returned to his studies, finished his academic degree and was mastered as an artist of monumental painting at the University of Stefan Batury (USB) in Vilnius. In 1947 he went to the city of Lodz in Poland, where he taught as a professor at the academy of arts. Four years later he left to Israel with his wife Rachel and newly born son Michael and settled down in Tel Aviv.

In Israel, Bogen continued with his artistic, cultural and educational activities. Since he started his second period of life in the Mediterranean, he evolved from a bright sketcher to a rich colorist and was never afraid to keep on learning, experiencing and find out new worlds – bright and dark. During the time he completed his artistic education in the Academie des Beaux Arts of Paris and was serving as a lecturer in the Hebrew University of Jeruslaem. All that, without giving up, even for on moment, on his main practice – painting, drawing and sculpturing until this day.

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