Charles Garabedian

 

 Charles Garabedian (1923 – 2016) was an American-Armenian artist known for his paintings and drawings rich in references to Greek and Chinese symbolism. His artwork reveals a deeply personal world that explores the relationship between painting and sculpture.
Garabedian was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Armenian immigrants who had come to the U.S. to escape the Armenian genocide. Garabedian's mother died when he was two and his father was unable to take care of the three children.Garabedian lived in an orphanage until age nine, when he, his father, and siblings moved to Los Angeles, California.
"Charles Garabedian’s paintings are not beautiful because they depict scenes from classical mythology, but because they render the world of classical mythology real. I’ve never imagined Prometheus surrounded by his own shit, for example, terrified and in unbearable agony from having his liver torn out on a daily basis. But Garabedian did, and did so with such inventive detail and visceral humor that he transports the classical to the present day, here. After hundreds of years of art history fetishizing classical aesthetics, Garabedian’s paintings remind the viewer that the world of Olympic gods and titans is one that is not perfect — instead, it is idyllic and savage and surreal all at once. ..As a late-blooming artist, Garabedian was never interested in making things that look like art; instead, he gave himself over to his instincts, pretensions, and mistakes, unafraid to explore and even embrace what others considered to be “bad.” He states in one interview, “The bad — I’m responsible for that and there must be something there. You know, you can’t just dismiss it by saying, ‘Oh, well he said that’s bad, this is good.’” His willingness to constantly question and prod at preconceived notions of good and bad is what earned him a spot in Marcia Tucker’s notorious “Bad” Painting exhibition at the New Museum in 1978, what later cemented his reputation as an artist’s artist, and what makes his work so compelling, even today."(hyperallergic.com)

 

Charles Garabedian

Charles Garabedian (December 29, 1923 – February 11, 2016) was an American Armenian artist known for his imaginative paintings and drawings rich in references to Greek and Chinese symbolism. His detailed artwork reveals a deeply personal world that explores the relationship between painting and sculpture.
Garabedian was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Armenian immigrants who had come to the U.S. to escape the Armenian Genocide. Garabedian's mother died when he was two and his father was unable to take care of the three children. Garabedian lived in an orphanage until age nine, when he, his father, and siblings moved to Los Angeles, California.

From 1942-1945, Garabedian served as a staff sergeant in the United States Air Force and was an aerial gunner in the European theater during World War II. Under the auspices of the G.I. Bill, Garabedian studied literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1947 to 1948.[5] He then went on to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he earned a bachelor's degree in history in 1950.He received his master's degree in 1961 at the University of California Los Angeles. He did not, however, become an artist until later in his life.

When in his forties, Garabedian began to explore the relationships between painting and drawing. His fascination with China is reflected in many of his pieces incorporating dragons and ornate grillwork and pattern. Although his most prolific period was in the late 1960s, later in his life he still continued to paint. The first solo exhibition of his work was held at the Ceeje gallery in Los Angeles (1963) and subsequent one man shows followed at the Fine Arts Gallery at California State University, Northridge (1974), and The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1976). His group exhibitions include the Whitney Museum of American Art Biennial Exhibition: Contemporary American Art, New York (1975) and others. In 1979, he was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts.[6] In 2011, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art hosted a retrospective of Garabedian's work.He died on February 11, 2016 at the age of 92.Wikipedia