Charles Garabedian [1923 - 2016]
Betty Cuningham Gallery is pleased to open Harlow’s Back!, an exhibition featuring paintings by Charles Garabedian that span more than 5 decades. This will be the gallery’s first exhibition since Garabedian’s passing at the age of 92 in 2016. A celebration for the artist and his work will be held on Saturday, February 17th, from 4 - 6 PM.
The exhibition’s title, Harlow’s Back!, takes its title from the earliest work in the show, Jean Harlow. A believer in the collective unconscious, Garabedian gravitated intuitively to the imagery and narrative of his ancient Armenian ancestors and, as in Harlow, to those icons that shine in his hometown of L.A. Garabedian is well known for this unique and imaginative subject matter: beautiful woman, powerful men, beleaguered women [Clytemnestra & Iphigenia] and chained men [Prometheus Chained].
Born in Detroit, MI in 1923, Charles Garabedian moved to California in his early teens. After serving in the United States Air Force during World War II, Garabedian received an undergraduate degree from the University of Southern California in 1950. He began painting at age 32 and decided to return to school to receive formal painting instruction from the University of California, Los Angeles, where he earned an MA in 1961. His work has been shown regularly in New York and Los Angeles since the early 1970s. Garabedian was the recipient of numerous awards and grants during his lifetime including the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, and a prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work can be seen in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, CA; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. In 2011, a comprehensive retrospective of Garabedian’s work was held at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in Santa Barbara, CA.
The exhibition will remain on view through Sunday, March 25, 2018.
