About the artist:

American, born Shanghai 1929-2004. Sam Tchakalian was one of the last links to the San Francisco School of abstract expressionism before his death in 2004 and one of the finest painters in California. He had exhibited continuously in America and abroad since the late 1950s, and had taught painting for many years at the San Francisco Art Institute. Tchakalian's career unfolded in three distinct periods yet he called all of his paintings happenings. The first and most romantic chapter in his work is abstract expressionistic--thick paint applied quickly announcing the artist's oversized personality. The second phase is minimal. Arch monochromatic canvases in chicklet colors that deny the hand of the artist. The third phase synthesizes both these styles in a knowing melange. Canvases are alternately graphic and textural, repositories of Tchakalian's acccumulated painterly wisdom. Tchkalian had one man shows at the De Young Museum of Fine Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art , Oakland Art Museum, Fresno Art Museum, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul. Public collections include the Whitney Museum of American Art, San Francsico Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Oakland Art Museum, Albright Knox Gallery, Brooklyn Museum, Crocker Art Museum, Newport Harbor Museum, San Jose Art Museum, Palm Springs Desert Museum, U.C. Berkeley Art Museum.