Alexander Bogen was born in Tartu, Estonia in the then Russian Empire, and brought up in the town of Wilno. As a young boy he adhered to the values of the Yiddish culture of Yung Vilne, as well as to the modern Polish culture. After completing his studies at the gymnasium, he was accepted to the Stefan Batory art academy affiliated with the Wilno University, where he studied painting and sculpture. His parents were physicians. His father came from a secular family and his mother was the daughter of Rabbi Tuvia Lobitzki, the then rabbi of Wołkowysk in Poland. When his studies were interrupted by World War II Bogen joined the partisans and became a commander of the partisan unit in the Narocz Forests.  He drew avidly what he witnessed of the war and buried many of the drawings he made  near Lake Narocz. He would often slip into the ghetto at Vilna to recruit potential partisans including Abraham Stukzkever in September 1943 when news spread the ghetto was to be liquidated, he helped to facilitate the rescue of members of the United Partisan Organization (FPO), a Jewish underground movement active in the ghetto. 

 

Bogen later said of what drew during this time: "We saw abandoned children. We saw people being led to the slaughter. I did not lay down my pencil for a moment. An artist condemned to death portraying people condemned to extermination...I sketched the forest, my brothers-in-arms, the battle itself. There was no table. There were no paints. There was no paper. I found packing paper. I burnt dry branches and prepared charcoal for my sketches. I asked myself why I was drawing, when I was fighting day and night… This is something similar to biological continuation. Every man, every people, is interested in continuing his people, his family, in bringing children into the world for the future – in leaving this one thing. Another motivation was to get information to the so-called free world……and to be creative in the situation of the Holocaust, this is also a protest... The artist reacts through his medium. This is his protest!... This is his weapon…This is what shows that the Germans could not break his spirit”

 

After the war Bogen returned to his studies, finished his academic degree and was mastered as an artist of monumental painting at the USB Academy of Art in Vilna. In 1947, he taught as a professor at The Academy of Fine Arts In Łódź and became a well-known artist, set designer and book illustrator. In 1951, Bogen and his wife immigrated to Israel and settled in Tel Aviv. 

 

During his time in Israel, Bogen continued his cultural and educational activities in the arts. In 1957 he initiated the art program in Ironi Yud-Dalet highschool in Tel Aviv and lead it for 22 years. Bogen completed his academic studies of art at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris and was an art lecturer in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Bogen continued painting, drawing and sculpting until his death at the age of 94 in Tel Aviv on October 20, 2010.

 

Solo Exhibitions:

1949 Municipal Museum, Breslau, Poland

1950 Municipal Museum, Lodz, Poland

1951 Yad-Lebanim Museum, Petach Tikva

1956 Museum of Art, Ein-Harod

1961 The Tel Aviv Museum of Art;

1961 Artists’ House, Haifa

1962 Artists’ House, Jerusalem

1962 St. Placide Gallery, Paris

1963 Rider Gallery, Los Angeles;

1963 Merkup Gallery, Mexico

1975 Glezer Gallery, N.Y.;

1975 Chelsea Gallery, São Paulo, Brazil

1976 Yad-Lebanim Museum, Petach Tikva

1979 Museum of Israel Art, Ramat-Gan

1980 Artists’ House, Jerusalem;

1980 Artists’ House, Tel Aviv;

1980 Old Jaffa Gallery

1981 Citè Internationale des Arts, Paris

1984 Bat-Yam Museum, Bat Yam

1985 Institute Francais, Tel Aviv;

1985 Petach Tikva Museum, Israel

1987 Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

1988 Museum Zons, Dormagen Neuss;

1988 Kreishaus, Ludwigsburg

1991 Artists’ House, Tel Aviv

1992 State Gallery, Lodz

1993 State Abakus Gallery, Warsaw

1994 State Gallery, Kraków

1995 Rathaus, Gerlingen, Germany;

1996 Vesoul Museum, France

1998 Beit Ariela Municipal Gallery, Tel Aviv

2001 The Ghetto Fighters’ House museum, Kibbutz Lohamei Haghettaot, Israel

2002 Alexander Bogen – Drawings for Poems in Yiddish, Reuben and Edith Hecht Museum, University of Haifa

2003 Drawing and painting Exhibition, Beit Shalom Halechem, Tel Aviv

2005 Drawing and Painting Exhibition, Bar'Am Museum

2009 Whitebox Gallery, Munich

2010 Kreishaus, Ludwigsburg

2010 The Russian Institut, Tel Aviv

 

Awards:

1951 State Prize, Polish Government Prize

1961 The Histadrut Prize, Israel

1962 The Israel Ministry of Education & Culture Prize

1980 Prize of the Sea League of Israel

1982 The Negev Prize

1993 Medal of the City of Vesoul, France

1995 Shalom Aleichem Prize, Israel

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