Konstantin Bogaevsky was born in the Eastern
Crimean city of
Feodosia to an old
Italian-German family of the
Genoese extraction on . He took first lessons in art from
Ivan Aivazovsky. In 1891-1897 he studied at the
Imperial Academy of Arts in the class of
Arkhip Kuindzhi. The art of young Konstantin was not popular with the academy and he was even at some stage temporarily discharged from the academy for "lack of talent". Despite this, Kuindzhi always had a high respect for his pupil and protected him. In 1898 Konstantin traveled to
Italy and France where he became acquainted with the works of
Claude Lorrain, whom he proclaimed as his true teacher. His first exhibition was in Moscow in 1898. From 1900 Bogaevsky worked in
Feodosia. The main theme of his works became the symbolist landscapes of a non-existent land (known to his friends as
Bogaevia) that he saw only in his dreams. Konstantin Bogaevsky became a popular painter after
Maximilian Voloshin published a series of essays titled
Konstantin Bogaevsky. Voloshin highly praised the symbolism of Bogaevsky's paintings. Contemporaries often drew parallels between Bogaevsky and
Nicholas Roerich. Bogaevsky was a member of
Mir iskusstva,
Union of Russian Artists, and the
Zhar-Tsvet. In 1906 he exhibited his paintings on ''Exposition de l'Art Russe'' organized by
Sergei Diaghilev. In 1911 he visited
Italy and discovered for himself the paintings of
Andrea Mantegna, which were to strongly influence Bogaevsky's own later work. Bogaevsky returned in 1912 to Feodosia where he was to remain for the rest of his life. He maintained a friendship of many years with another famous Feodosian and a bard of a non-existent land,
Alexander Grin, as well as with the
Koktebel group of Russian
Intelligentsia including
Maximilian Voloshin,
Marina Tsvetaeva, and
Osip Mandelstam. After the
October Revolution Bogaevsky retreated into relative obscurity, although works such as the 1932
Port of an Imaginary City were highly regarded as art in the school of
Socialist Realism painting of the
DnieproGES. He died at Feodosia on 17 February 1943, hit in the head by shrapnel during a Soviet air raid. A
minor planet,
3839 Bogaevskij, discovered by
Soviet astronomer
Nikolai Stepanovich Chernykh in 1971, is named after him. == Style and Works ==