Szafran (b. 1934, Paris, France), the son of Polish Jewish immigrants, spent his early years hiding from persecution in Switzerland and Australia, before returning to Paris in 1951. Largely self-taught, in 1953 Szafran began studying under Henri Goetz at the Atelier de la Grande Chaumière. Early experiments with abstraction gradually gave way to a life-long commitment to figuration. Szafran’s discovery of the Roché sisters’ handmade pastels in the early 1960s was significant. The use of pastel, together with charcoal and watercolour, has defined his method ever since. Among Szafran’s subjects, three stand out: the studio interior, vertiginous stairwells and greenhouses filled with exotic plants. Through these intense, existential subjects, he has obsessively refined his mastery of pastel. Alberto Giacometti became Szafran’s mentor shortly after they met at Le Dôme café in 1961. Szafran regarded him as the most important twentieth-century artist for his sense of the ‘essential’ and his inclination for figuration over abstract subjects. Sculptors have played an important role in Szafran’s life. From the late 1950s onwards, he has associated with Raymond Masson, Joseph Erhardy, Jacques Delahaye, Alberto and Diego Giacometti, Yves Klein, Jean Tinguely and Roseline Granet who encouraged him in his work despite difficult circumstances. Other important friendships included the jazz musician Chet Baker, and Henri Cartier-Bresson, to whom Szafran taught drawing. Szafran’s first solo exhibition took place at the Galerie Jacques Kerchache in 1965. Szafran has also regularly exhibited with Galerie Claude Bernard in Paris. In 1999, his first museum retrospective was organised at the Fondation Pierre Gianadda in Martigny, Switzerland, which subsequently travelled to the Fondation Maeght in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. In 2013, the Fondation Pierre Gianadda is hosting another retrospective entitled ‘Sam Szafran: 50 ans de peinture’. In 2004, the Fondation Pierre Gianadda inaugurated the Szafran Pavilion, two monumental ceramic sculptures inspired by the artist’s work. Important group exhibitions include the 1982 Venice Biennale, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1989, and the Centre Pompidou in 1997. In 1993, the City of Paris awarded Szafran the Grand Prix des Arts, and in 2011 he was promoted to commander of l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His work is included in the collections of Jacques and Natasha Gelman, Emmanuel Roman, Léonard Gianadda, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1974, Szafran moved to a studio in the Paris suburb of Malakoff, where he still lives and works.