Oriental People 1984

Alexander Bogen made this painting, titled ‘Oriental People,’ with oils on canvas. Bogen was a Lithuanian-Israeli painter, sculptor, and teacher. Born in Estonia, Bogen fled to the Soviet Union after the Nazi invasion. After the war, he returned to Lithuania. In 1951, he immigrated to Israel, where he was the head of the painting department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. Here, Bogen uses cubist-influenced abstraction. The title seems to participate in the Orientalist tropes common in European art in earlier decades. It is an image of genericized “Oriental People.” However, as a Jewish artist who fled Nazi persecution, Bogen may be making a statement about the treatment of those seen as "other". To fully understand the meaning of this work, we might consult archives and records from the Bezalel Academy and research the artist's biography. Understanding the artwork is contingent on social and institutional context.