20th Century Russian painter Sergei Bongart was born in Kiev in the Ukraine. He studied art in Kiev, Prague, Vienna and Munich, before emigrating to the USA in 1948. From Memphis, Tennessee. He moved to Los Angeles in 1954 where he founded an art school and taught a number of aspiring young painters who later became well-known, nationally collected American artists.Bongart established an art school in Idaho in 1969. He lived half the year in Santa Monica, California and the other half in Idaho. Much of his art reflects the rustic settings which reminded him of his homeland.
Bongart is admired for his richly colored and emotionally expressive landscapes, still lifes and portraits. He was best known as a colorist, working in exaggerated color, using dynamic but carefully controlled color relationships and extolling the virtues of approaching painting as “color first, subject last" Source: Wikipedia
“There are no bad subjects, only lousy artists. Everything can be forgiven in art, but boring art.” Sergei Bongart