Sam Szafran

Sam Szafran (19 November 1934 – 14 September 2019) was a French artist. He has been buried in the cimetière parisien de Bagneux. Sam Szafran was born in Paris in 1934, a son of Polish Jewish immigrants. He grew up in the Quartier des Halles. As a child, he knew that art was what he wanted to do. During World War II he was hidden in the countryside and later in Switzerland, but returned to Paris in 1944 to live with his mother. He was captured there by the Nazis and sent to a camp in Drancy. He was freed by the Americans and then left Europe, spending four years in Australia. He returned to Paris in 1951. Following abstract beginnings at the Atelier de la Grande Chaumière, where the young artist studied under Henri Goetz, he discovered pastel in the early 1960s. During the postwar period he encountered as well Jean Arp, Yves Klein, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Joan Mitchell, Alberto Giacometti, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Martine Franck. In 1963 he married the Swiss-born Lilette Keller, and their son Sébastien was born the following year. After spending several years in studios provided by their friends, they finally moved to Malakoff in 1974. The discovery of the pastel was of great significance to Sam Szafran. Since the beginning of the 1960s he has been using the pastel chalks of "Pastels Roché" which were fabricated based on the family recipe by the three sisters of the Roché-family at the Maison du Pastel. From now on this technique has been dominating his work either alone or in combination with charcoal or watercolor. At the same time the themes of his paintings intensified as well. The numerous series of staircases, jungle-like greenhouses and studios ("Ateliers") are the result of his obsession with mastering perfectly the somewhat anachronistic technique of pastel. By focusing on figurative themes and technical precision this kind of painting contradicts most of the abstract and gestural tendencies of contemporary art; this is an art beyond concepts, trends and ephemeral styles.