Alexander Bogomazov or Oleksandr Bohomazov (; March 27, 1880 – June 3, 1930) was a Ukrainian painter, cubo-futurist, modern art theoretician and is recognised as one of the key figures of the Ukrainian avant-garde scene. In 1914, Olexandr wrote his treatise The Art of Painting and the Elements. In it he analyzed the interaction between Object, Artist, Picture, and Spectator and sets the theoretical foundation of modern art. During his artistic life Olexandr Bohomazov mastered several art styles. The most known are Cubo-Futurism (1913–1917) and Spectralism (1920–1930). Early Life Olexandr Bohomazov was born in Yampil, Kharkiv Province (now Sumy Region, Ukraine) as a second child to Konstantyn & Anisia Bohomazovs. The artist's father was an accountant, who worked at the local sugar factory and later rose to the status of a merchant. The boy hardly knew his mother - she left the family and remarried a visiting officer. Olexandr started to show early desire for painting while studying at the gymnasium. However, his father did not approve of his style, considering it too raw, and insisted that the boy graduate from the Kherson Agricultural School, where he majored in agronomy from 1896 to 1902. But the art prevailed, and with the support of his uncle, Olexandr convinces his father to allow him to move to Kyiv and enter the Kyiv Art School in 1902. In Kyiv Art School, Bohomazov was taught by Oleksandr Murashko and Ivan Seleznev, while Oleksandra Ekster and Oleksandr Arkhipenko, future stars of the avant-garde, studied with him. In 1905 he was expelled from the school due to his participation in political demonstrations and strikes. As of 1906, he studied in the Kyiv studio of Serhii Sviatoslavskiy and spent the summer of 1907 in Crimea with Alexis Grichenko and Vladimir Denisov, fellow-students in the Sviatoslavskiy studio. They rented a wooden house in Vorontsovsky Park just outside Alupka, 8 miles south-west of Yalta, and sketched from dawn till dusk. Bohomazov thereupon left for Moscow, studying under Konstantin Yuon and Fyodor Rerberg (alongside Malevich), before returning to Kyiv in 1908 to participate in the city’s first Modernist exhibition, Zveno (‘The Link’) together with David Burliuk, Wladimir Burliuk, Aleksandra Ekster and others. Artistic Periods The Finnish Cycle, 1911 In June 1911, while working part-time in the newspaper Kyivska Dumka (Kyivan Thought), Bohomazov was sent on a business trip to Karelia (back then, Russian Empire, now Finland & Russia), to create