From Complete Obscurity to Museum Recognition: James Butterwick on Ukrainian Painter Alexander Bogomazov
Butterwick champions the work of this unknown avant-garde artist, whose Futurist work is now entering museum collections
- By Cheyenne Wehren
- Meet the Experts
An art dealer in early 20th-century Russian and Ukrainian art, James Butterwick shares his journey towards this specialism and his passion for one artist in particular: the Ukrainian avant-garde painter and theorist Alexander Bogomazov (1880–1930). While part of the active artistic community of his time, Bogomazov has remained largely unknown and Butterwick is dedicated to his reappraisal. He has presented numerous works by Bogomazov at TEFAF, seven of which were acquired by the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo. “[…] if you are pushing the work of an artist and suddenly there’s this groundswell of opinion, a groundswell of support […] then it’s a subject of enormous pride.”