Sam SZAFRAN 1934-2019

Sam Szafran was born Samuel Berger in Paris in 1934 and died in Malakoff (France) in 2019.
His childhood was marked by exile and the Second World War.

This tragedy profoundly influenced his sensibility and his predilection for working in the studio.
Returning to France in 1951, he led a precarious life and was self-taught, attending the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and associating with artists such as Yves Klein and Jean-Paul Riopelle.
It was a box of pastels, given to him in 1960, that transformed his practice and made pastel drawing, in particular, one of his preferred means of expression.

From then on, the intimate architecture of everyday life—staircases, glass roofs, printing workshops—would form the core of his repertoire.
Thus, his staircases, seen from above or as an interweaving of planes, convey an obsession with motif and a vertigo of perspective.

Working alone, Szafran refines his themes to the highest degree of precision, creating an immediately recognizable pictorial universe.

In France, the National Museum of Modern Art – Centre Pompidou holds several of his works, confirming his unique place in contemporary French art.
The Musée de l’Orangerie dedicated a retrospective to him in 2022, highlighting his “obsessions” and his poetics of reality.
Sam Szafran left behind a body of work centered on memory, matter, and intimate space, where the familiar becomes enigmatic.