Abraham van den Boogaart (after his father), known as Bram Bogart was born on July 12, 1921 in Delft, the Natherlands and is a Dutch-born Belgian painter. Bogart is an expressionist, most closely associated with the COBRA group.
Bogart attended technical school, where he trained for a career as a decorator. He took correspendence classes in drawing. After graduating he took a job with an advertising concern in Rotterdam in 1937 as a commercial artist, painting, among other subjects, portraits of the child star Shirley Temple, before leaving his job and launching a career in fine art in 1939. Subesequent to World War II he moved to Paris where he settled at age 25. Here he co-founded Art Informel. He often traveled between Paris and Le Cannet on the Côte d'Azur.
In the 1950s he began to experiment with impasto using thick layers of boldly applied and colourful paint to develop his expressionist style. His style became more abstract with time.
Bogart befriended Appel and his Cobra associates but fell out with the Dutch cultural establishment over what he perceived as its obsession with Cobra at the expense of any other style. In 1961 Bogart and his wife Leni moved to Belgium, first to Brussels, then for the rest of his life to Ohain, in the province of Walloon Brabant and in 1969 he became a Belgian citizen. He began to experiment with a more three-dimensional medium, a mix of mortar, siccative, powdered chalk, varnish, and raw pigment, applied to large, heavy wooden backing structures.
Bogart exhitited often in Antwerp and Ghent and in 1971 he represented Belgium at the Venice Biennale. In 2011 Bogart presented an exhibition in celebration of his 90th birthday, a display of his Monochrome paintings, held at the Bernard Jacobson Gallery in London. A retrospective of his work was also exhibited at Galerie Jean-Luc and Takako Richard in Paris.
Bogart died May 2, 2012 in Sint-Truiden, Belgium at the age of 90.
Bogart’s art is featured in many public and private collections including the Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, the Guggenheim in New York and the Louvre and Pompidou Centre in Paris.
