Biography

Sir L., Levon Aradian in civilian life, was born in Beirut in 1932 in an Armenian family. His father, a survivor of the Armenian Genocide, was committed in 1915 in the French Army of the East. His mother was born in New York. Sir L. was educated by the Jesuits at the French lycée in Beirut and he came naturally to Paris in 1951 to continue his studies at the Sorbonne. In the 50s, he is active in the literary and artistic circles of Saint Germain des Prés, travel on foot to discover France and Europe, did all kinds of odd jobs, pick strawberries in the fields, dish scrubber in Sweden, truck unloader at the Halles in Paris or model for the Ecole Nationale supérieure des Beaux Arts and frequented the studios of the masters Jean Lurçat, Fernand Léger, Zadkine Ossip, Chana Orloff, Germaine Richier and the Julian Academy.

Poet, it is at 40 years of age that he dedicated his life to drawing, a vocation born in his teens which can then flourish.

He participates in the Salon d'Automne, Comparaisons, de Mai, Figuration critique, Montrouge and it is at the Salon de la Jeune Peinture, highlight place of new creativity, that he instigates in the 70s groups of artists "La Peinture pour qui ?" ("Paint for whom ?", "Imaginaires de peintres et imageries populaires" ("Imaginary painters and popular imageries)", "Crises", "Classicismes et Réalismes" ("Classicisms and Realisms").

Then in the 80s, he is the coder and the get together of the NOUVEAU CLASSICISME New classicism movement, which includes fifty figurative painters, away from fashions and official streams. An aesthetic that defends, in exhibitions that Sir L. initiates, "a painting of people's feeling", because "art has primarily the function of representing mentalities and fundamental emotions, world visions of human groups in a language understandable to them". (SIR L. Modernité et modernisme (Modernity and Modernism), 1989).

He is also, from 1990 to 1992, the convener of the exhibition "Colours of Life", which brings together 100 international artists for Human Rights, in memory of victims of genocide of the twentieth century, at a time where the Armenian people is threatened again. The exhibition first presented in Paris at the National Library then circulates in Europe, in Madrid, among others, the Museum of Modern Art, and the National Gallery in Prague at the invitation of President Vaclav Havel.

The work of Sir L. celebrates the beauty of the world, women, nature, because art is for him "the antidote of the horrors of our times."

His works have been exhibited in France, in Paris and in the regions, Germany, Andorra, Armenia, Belgium, South Korea, Spain, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia and his artistic rugs in 2005 at the Aichi World Expo in Japan.