Born in Paris in 1934, it is in the provinces - in the Loiret and in Aveyron - that this eldest son of emigrated Jewish-Polish parents found refuge during the second world war. After a brief internment in Drancy, Sam Szafran, whose real name is Samuel Berger, was sent to Switzerland in 1944, then to Melbourne, Australia where he stayed with his mother and sister until 1951.
On his return to France, in the misery of the post-war period, he follows some drawing lessons in the schools of the City of Paris.
For him, the 1950s are those of artistic encounters that gradually mark his aesthetic horizon. He then attended classes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, an art school founded by the Swiss painter Martha Stettler (1870-1945) in 1904.
The personalities he encounters are those that polarize intellectual debates by offering some of the most ambitious plastic solutions. They are Nicolas de Staël, Yves Klein or Jean Dubuffet and Jean Tinguely. He tried collages and abstract painting before returning to figuration in the early 1960s.
In 1964, his work was presented at the Paris gallery Claude Bernard before being the subject of a solo exhibition orchestrated by the art dealer and collector Jacques Kerchache (1942-2001).
Sam Szafran (né en 1934)
Atelier au feuillage avec personnage, 1978
Estimation : 120 000 / 180 000 €
Atelier au feuillage avec personnage proposed for sale by PIASA is emblematic of the production of the artist of the mid-1970s around his favorite themes. Made in pastel and pencil. Here, a luxuriant vegetation unfolds on almost all the represented space. Breaking the omnipresence of a captivating blue, the red coat of the character sitting on a chair attracts the eye of the viewer.
In 1999 and 2001, two retrospectives of his work are organized. A first at the Pierre Gianadda Foundation in Martigny (Switzerland) the second at the Museum of Romantic Life in Paris.
