It is little to say that we are delighted to be able to admire the pastels and watercolours of Sam Szafran at the Musée de l’Orangerie, after a “long institutional purgatory” * which had kept him away from the official scene. The last Sam Szafran retrospective. 50 years of painting, at the Pierre Gianadda Foundation in Martigny took place in 2012.
It is also little to say that we regret that the painter, who died in 2019, could not attend this superb retrospective. It will be remembered that the exhibition planned for the late 1990s at the Centre Pompidou had been cancelled without explanation.

Three years after the artist’s death, the Musée de l’Orangerie highlights, in the first exhibition organized by a French museum in two decades, the painter’s favourite subjects – workshops, stairs and foliage – inspired by their immediate surroundings.

Sam Szafran was introduced to pastel and watercolour, techniques that had been somewhat neglected since the end of the 18th century. He uses it to magnify them, using the immense palette of tones at his disposal .

*Alain Finkelkraut, Replies, December 10, 2022.

Sam Szafran, Obsessions of a painter

Musée de l’Orangerie, Jardin des Tuileries, Paris du 28 septembre 2022 au 16 janvier 2023