French painter, draughtsman, pastellist and lithographer of Armenian origin, born Levon Aradian in 1932 in Beirut, died in Paris.
Life
Sir L. was born into an Armenian family in Beirut. His father, a survivor of the Armenian genocide, had enlisted in 1915 in the French Army of the Orient; his mother was born in New York. Taught by the Jesuits at the French lycée in Beirut, he came to Paris in 1951 to study at the Sorbonne.
In the 1950s he moved in the literary and artistic circles of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, walked across France and Europe, took odd jobs and posed as a model at the École des beaux-arts. He passed through the studios of Jean Lurçat, Fernand Léger, Ossip Zadkine, Chana Orloff and Germaine Richier, as well as the Académie Julian. In 1972 he devoted himself entirely to drawing and painting.
He exhibited at the Salon d’automne, Comparaisons, the Salon de mai, Figuration critique and the Salon de Montrouge. In the 1970s, at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, he brought together the groups “La Peinture pour qui ?”, “Imaginaires de peintres et imageries populaires”, “Crises” and “Classicismes et Réalismes”. In the 1980s he gathered some fifty figurative painters around the “New Classicism” (Nouveau Classicisme).
In 1990 he organised Couleurs de la vie, an exhibition of a hundred international artists in memory of the victims of the Armenian genocide and the genocides of the twentieth century, shown at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and then in Europe, notably in Madrid and at the National Gallery in Prague, at the invitation of Václav Havel.
The work
The New Classicism championed by Sir L. advocates a popular figurative painting, accessible to all, founded on feelings and fundamental emotions. His work celebrates the beauty of the world, of women and of nature, and holds art to be an antidote to contemporary horrors. He also designed artist’s rugs, shown at the 2005 World Expo in Aichi (Japan).
Exhibitions and collections
- More than three hundred group exhibitions and some thirty solo exhibitions.
- Bibliothèque nationale de France; Musée de l’Érotisme, Paris; Musée Saint-Vic, Saint-Amand-Montrond.