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Sam Tchakalian
Painting
American
(Shanghai, China, 1929 - 2004, San Francisco, California)


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Biography

Sam Tchakalian’s impact on the history of California art is twofold: he is celebrated for his spirited nonobjective paintings, their luscious surfaces revealing his single-minded devotion to the material nature of paint; and he was respected for his role as an influential teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute, where his unflinching honesty and committed attitude guided students for 35 years. Early in his career Tchakalian discovered a manner of working that suited him and he spent a lifetime devoted to exploring its possibilities and affirming his belief in the process of creation through the manipulation of his chosen materials.

Tchakalian was born in Shanghai, China, in 1929 and moved with his family to San Francisco in 1947. He served in the U.S. Army then earned an A.A. degree from San Francisco City College, followed by a B.A. in psychology and an M.A. in art from San Francisco State University. Tchakalian lived and worked in the same Duboce Street studio, littered with paint rags and five-gallon paint cans, from 1957 until his death in 2004. In 1966 he began teaching at the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). According to San Francisco Examiner critic Thomas Albright, his paintings at this time consisted “entirely of lush, unbroken fields of solid color produced by pouring, rolling, and brushing layer upon layer of oil onto immensely scaled horizontal canvases.”1 Color and the material qualities of paint became the central subject matter of his work, which became increasingly architectural over time. By the 1970s, Tchakalian began using his canvas as a palette, mixing, modulating, and sweeping paint across his canvases in long, broad, horizontal stripes. In many of his paintings of the following two decades, vestiges of this technique remained evident, particularly when the artist combined three or more hues on a single canvas.

Hole in One (ca. 1990) initially seems simple, yet the evidence of Tchakalian’s gestures and process are an integral aspect of the work and its complexity unfolds upon closer inspection. The artist began by painting a thin base coat of red oil paint on the canvas, which he almost completely covered with a layer of white gesso. Over the gesso he painted great sweeping horizontal strokes of blue-green, accented by darker blue-green and gray, and punctuated with patches of unpainted primed canvas. The painting possesses neither illusionistic effects nor allusions to anything found in the outside world. Execution and performance are unstated correlates of Hole in One; the artist’s effort is evident where he swept his tool across the canvas, varying his pressure and indicating his presence through the application of the paint. The soothing, watery reference of the blue-green color establishes a calming mood, and the rhythmic horizontal stripes reinforce the sensation of respite, as does the generosity with which the artist handles the medium.

Artist and art critic Mark Van Proyen, who both studied with Tchakalian from 1975 to 1979 and taught with him from 1985 to 2001 at SFAI, described his colleague’s work: “there was much more to Sam’s paintings than the fetish of paint for the sake of paint; there was also an allusiveness to them that is still hard to pin down in words, something very basic. I think that it had to do with putting the erotics of touch into the foreground of experience, and this attribute applies to all good paintings from any historical moment.”2 Tchakalian would have affirmed Van Proyen’s assertion, as he believed that oil paint itself, and experience in its use were among last reservoirs of honest discovery a painter had to tap in order to yield the pleasures and substance of art.3 —J.N.

1. Thomas Albright, Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945–1980 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 130.
2. Mark Van Proyen, email to the author, 28 March 2004.
3. Kenneth Baker, “Against Strategy,” Sam Tchakalian (Seoul, Korea: National Museum of Contemporary Art, 1989), n.p.

(SJMA Selections publication, 2004)

Tchakalian was born in Shanghai, China, in 1929 and moved with his family to San Francisco in 1947. After serving in the U.S. Army, Tchakalian earned a B.A. in psychology and an M.A. in art from San Francisco State University. Tchakalian lived and worked in the same Duboce Street studio, littered with paint rags and five-gallon paint cans, from 1957 until his death in 2004. In 1966 he began a 35 year teaching career at the San Francisco Art Institute. Color and the material qualities of paint became the central subject matter of Tchakalian’s work, which became increasingly architectural over time. Early in his career, Tchakalian discovered a manner of working that suited him and he spent a lifetime devoted to exploring its possibilities and affirming his belief in the process of creation through the manipulation of his chosen materials. [Bio from Juicy Paint Exhibition, input by R. Faust, 8/1//2010]

Sam Tchakalian was born in Shanghai, China in 1929. He received his B.A. in psychology and his M.A. in art, both from San Francisco State University. He has taught at numerous art schools throughout California, including the San Francisco Art Institute, UC Berkeley, the California College of Arts and Crafts, and UC Davis. Tchakalian’s work has been exhibited extensively around the world. He was the subject of a retrospective exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California in 1978. This work on paper will complement two other Tchakalian works in the Museum’s permanent collection Propensity, a work on paper from 1959 and Spot Five, a painting from 1991. (SJMA Collections Committee, 2000)

Sam Tchakalian lived in Shanghai, China, where he was born in 1929, before moving to San Francisco in 1947.  After earning a B.A. in psychology at San Francisco State University in 1952, Tchakalian served for two years with military intelligence in the Korean War. Since 1959 Tchakalian has taught art at various locations around the Bay Area, including California College of Arts and Crafts and the San Francisco Art Institute. His work has been shown at a number of public institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Portland Center for the Visual Arts, Oakland Museum and the Smithsonian Institute National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington, D.C. This will be the second painting by Tchakalian to enter SJMA’s permanent collection. SJMA currently has one print by the artist in the collection. (SJMA Collections Committee, 2003)


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