Charles Garabedian was an Armenian-born American artist, who represented Contemporary Realism movement. In his works, Garabedian explored the relationship between painting and sculpture.
Background
Charles Garabedian was born on December 29, 1923 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. His parents were Armenian immigrants, who arrived to the United States in order to escape the Armenian Genocide. Charles was the youngest of three children. His mother died, when he was two years old. His father, seriously injured shortly afterward in an automobile accident, was forced to place the siblings in an orphanage. Some time later, Charles's father took him and his siblings to Los Angeles.
Education
During a short period from 1947 to 1948, Charles studied literature at the University of California in Santa Barbara. Some time later, he decided to continue his studies and got his Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of Southern California in 1950. Later, in 1961, Garabedian graduated from the University of California in Los Angeles with Master of Arts degree.
Since 1942 to 1945, Charles Garabedian served as a staff sergeant in the United States Air Force. Also, he was an aerial gunner in the European theater during World War II.
He began his career at the age of 32. In 1963, his first solo show was held at Ceeje Gallery in West Hollywood. Some time later, in 1975, he created his first mature work entitled "Chinese Mr. Hyde". During that time, he also explored the relationships between painting and drawing. His fascination with China is reflected in many of his works.
Also, since 1960's to 1990's, he taught at different educational institutions, including the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), California State University in Northridge, California Institute of the Arts, College for Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit, Cooper Union and others.
During his lifetime, the artist took part in numerous group exhibitions at different museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art and others. In his final years, Charles lived and worked in Santa Monica, California.
Quotations:
"When I first encountered The Iliad and Greece, and Armenian manuscripts, I immediately felt at home with them."
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"In his extraordinary works, Garabedian approaches painting as a kind of battlefield of the psyche, manned by cultural tropes and personal memories. An instinctual Freudian, he offers mythic retellings of war, friendship, death, and sexual experience, mining both individual and collective consciousness for sparks of subconscious truth. This untamed process is everywhere evident on his canvases, manifested in dream-like landscapes and seascapes littered with lumbering forms, sketchy marks, crumbling architecture, and skewed body parts. These are visual representations of the artist’s thought, designed to entice viewers to follow the associational processes of an artist on a voyage of self-discovery that just might result in shipwreck." — Michael Duncan, art historian and critic
Connections
Charles Garabedian was married to Gwen Garabedian. Their marriage produced one daughter — Claire.