Known by his first name, Assadour was born in Beirut (1943), 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 Academy. 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 Krakow Award at the International Print Biennale, Poland (1980); and Honourable Mention at the Norwegian International Print Biennale, Fredrikstad, Norway (1980), the Medal of Honour at the Male Form Grafiki, Lodz, Poland (1981), the Museum of Modern Art Award, Ljubljana, 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 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 hiding and seek continues. Identity unknown. Of no fixed abode. A creature of the fourth dimension? A clockwork toy or a prototype 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.