 Assadour
Bezdikian b. 1943
Known by his first name, Assadour was born in Beirut, but left Lebanon
at the age of eighteen. He spent the summers of 1962, 1963 and 1964
in Perugia where he studied at the Pietro Vanucci Accademy. After
that he went to Paris, and from 1964 to 1970 studied at the Ecole
Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts under the supervision
of Coutaud.
Assadour is
an active member of many institutions connected with the arts. He
was on the committee of the Salon de Mai from 1974 to 1977, and
a member of La Jeune Gravure Contemporaine from 1975 to 1979. Since
1984 he has been on the committee of Les Peintres Graveurs Français.
He has won many
international awards: the Gold Medal at the Terza Biennale Internationale
della Grafica d'Arte, Florence (1972); the Silver Medal at the Biennale
Internationale de l'Estampe, Epinal, France (1973); the First Prize
at the Biennale de Givet (1975), the President of the town of Crakow
Award at the International Print Biennale, Poland (1980); and Honourable
Mention at the Norwegian International Print Biennale, Frederikstad,
Norway (1980), the Medal of Honour at the Male Formy Grafiki, Lodz,
Poland (1981), the Museum of Modern Art Award, Lubljana, Yugoslavia
(1983), and the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris (1984).
Assadour has
illustrated many books and publications including L'Affaire Lemoine,
Paris, 1968-69; Fragment N'3, Liechtenstein, 1972; La Vecchiaia
Nevica, Milan, 1978; Ombre, Luxembourg, 1976; L’Oiseleuse, Paris,
1978, and many others.
He has held
many exhibitions; in Paris, at the Galerie La Pochade (1971), Galerie
Sagot-le-Game (1977, 1983), Galerie du Dragon (1986) and Galerie
Faris at the FIAC (1986); in Rome, at Galleria L'Arco (1980) and
Galleria II Millennio and in Brussels at the Galerie La Taille Douce
(1972). He has also exhibited in Luxembourg, Amsterdam, West Germany,
Tokyo and Taiwan. He participated regularly in the Salons of the
Sursock Museum between 1962 and 1966.
Assadour lives
at present in Paris.
Article
by Nohad Salemeh
The strangeness
of a universe peopled with mythical characters, centaurs, sorcerers
adjoining a space filled with a bric-à-brac of numbers, signs,
bits of machinery, disjointed elements; it is the fusion of science
and of fiction, or perhaps an imposition of the rational in order
to fix the irrational, to give it concrete form. Assadour proposes
a journey to us that is beyond our geographical present, outside
the space in which we live and beyond even the space in which we
dream; it is a voyage that cuts us off in a fabulous interval where
time and duration are excluded, an expedition that forms the artist's
central knot of legend and defines him as the geometrician of the
third space.
Assadour is
an artist who thinks his dream but who equally dreams his reflection.
In this sense, his almost narrative symbolism set in the context
of improvised tales covering the surface of his canvas – this symbolism
is rather in the spirit of legend, whereas his rather cerebral subject
matter brings a fresh viewpoint to the science of interrogation
and this in the context of psychoanalysis. Indeed, Assadour attempts
to pursue the dream, to seize it and sew it together again the better
to reconstitute it in all its deceptions and its surprises. There
is, too, a new vision where technique is concerned; in his watercolors,
notably, the passage from geometric touches (squares, spheres, demi-spheres)
to more fluid brush-strokes that dissolve in winding coils. Far
from masking the linearity, the color reinforces it and along with
the tenderness of the forms brings expressiveness and rigor. With
all its intermediate range of pinks, blues and grays, the color
creates new legendary and lyrical “traps” here and there by virtue
of its very fluidity. In other words, the line resulting from a
synchronization of the felt and the thought renounces its tension
to dissolve into a lyric dimension; and the touches of color displayed
in all their poetry seem to take on a precise function: to render
beautiful these randomly gathered materials, these discarded objects,
the debris waiting to be reconstituted that fills Assadour's work
and has its own name: scar tissue of a city.
Assadour 1943 – Departure, Aquatint etching, 45 x 56 cm
Article
by Fiona Dunlop
...Unraveling
the knots of Assadour's esoteric universe is like counting grains
of sand. Its very essence is a never ending enigma and a frustrating
one in that his images are scattered with innumerable clues, some
identifiable others seemingly private codes. They appear fleetingly,
silently, disturbingly, inviting comprehension but immediately retreating
before definition...
The artist pushes
our powers of analysis to the limit, leaving us feebly intoning
"poetic" "mysterious" "timeless" or
similar words to the same equivocal effect. He is the master of
contradictions, of innuendos of ambiguities, of paradox, managing
to create images which amalgamate opposites, are neither one thing
nor the other, but ultimately catalyze both peoples into a distinct
sensation, that uneasy sensation of the unknown.
Order/chaos;
construction/destruction; lightness/darkness; past/future; optimism/pessimism;
desert/city; North/South; East/West; Assadour's game of opposites
is eternal and infinite, and he knowingly draws us through it by
the fine point of his graphic instrument, occasionally letting us
stumble in the shadow of a symbol, than again leading us towards
an ever-receding horizon.
...And then
the human figure enters the stage: unreal, puppet like, naive, observing
his surroundings, balancing his hoop although he is perhaps past
the age of play, still nostalgic for his youth. At other moments
he is barely visible, a fleeing figure disappearing through a doorway,
illusory, the fame of hide and seek continues. Identity unknown.
Of no fixed abode. A creature of the fourth dimension? A clockwork
toy or a protype for a new civilization? He remains solitary, aloof,
and separate from his environment, overpowered but the suffocating
silence which reigns while the red dust settles and the sands shift
and the sirocco blows...
A pyramid, a
half-moon, a polygon, a cluster of number, a stylized (doll's) house,
a diagonal line with a fixed point, a glimpse of a brick wall, a
(tantric?) circle: the guessing game begins again, we have come
full circle, Assadour has added another cipher.
>More
information in French
►►
Some of the artist's Artwork
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