Avgust Černigoj was born on August 24, 1898, in Trieste to Maksimiljan from Dobravlje and Marija Grgič. Between 1912 and 1916, he attended the School of Arts and Crafts in Trieste, specializing in decorative painting. From 1920 to 1922, he taught drawing in Postojna and passed the exam in Bologna to teach drawing and art history in secondary schools. In the autumn of 1922, he enrolled at the Academy in Munich, later moving to the renowned Bauhaus in Weimar.

In August 1924, he held the first Constructivist exhibition—a synthesis of artistic and socially revolutionary action—at the Secondary Technical School in Ljubljana, where he taught the following year. Černigoj collaborated with Delak’s Novi oder (New Stage) and the magazine Tank. In autumn 1925, after being politically expelled from Ljubljana, he returned to Trieste, where he organized his private art school and continued to promote Constructivism. During this period, he also worked as a set and costume designer for the People’s Theater in Sv. Jakob.

To make a living, he became a painter on ocean liners and later a decorator. During World War II, he painted several churches in the Primorska region (e.g., Štivan near Devin, Knežak, Bač, Košana, Rečica). His long-standing pedagogical work is especially significant. After 1946, he taught at the Slovenian Real Gymnasium and Teachers’ College in Trieste until his retirement in 1970. The last five years of his life were spent in Lipica, where the gallery named after him houses over 1,400 of his works. Černigoj passed away on November 17, 1985, in Sežana, where he is buried.

During his lifetime, he participated in numerous exhibitions both at home and abroad, receiving several awards for his work, including the 1976 Prešeren Award for lifetime achievement. In 1981, he was elected a corresponding member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SAZU). Streets in Sežana and Ljubljana are named in his honor.