Untitled

Assadour Bezdikian, known as Assadour, is of Lebanese-Armenian origin. Born in Beirut in 1943, he went abroad at the age of twenty to study engraving and painting first in Italy and later in Paris. As well as producing many engravings, Assadour explored the medium of gouache on paper and oil on canvas. His paintings are rare and often sought after, as he did not execute many, and this lot is a prime example of his painted oeuvre. A recurrent theme in Assadour's paintings, the figures are inserted in a land or cityscape which is only suggested by the geometric lines and shapes of the composition. This constructivist approach refers to Assadour's attempt to put some order to the world's chaos, like the one he experienced back in Beirut and just like the disorder he still sees today. In the artist's latest works such as the present lot, monumental figures seem more and more to replace the architectural structure and to be the core of the composition's space. (Claude Lemand, ASSADOUR, Recent Paintings, November 2010, invitation card).

Assadour succeeded in developping a powerful and personal unique oeuvre, fusing two major European art trends, the Constructivism of the Bauhaus and the Parisian Surrealism.

'Assadour the secret, prince of encryption, with a tempered yet passionate nature, appears to be the most meticulous master of images, which he interlocks, untangles, clots, separates again and finally fuses into one same substance. His layout is ingeniously inscrutable yet nothing has been randomly placed. Everything is so precise in this chaos which is very well thought out, that Assadour does not seem to destroy all the codes but rather substitutes them with his own.' (Gérard Xuriguera, ASSADOUR, Paris, 2003).