Chaki
A skilled colourist, Canadian painter Chaki has painted landscapes since the 1970s and is always mining the theme for new inspiration. Landscapes and still-lifes are created by selecting commonly known elements of nature that are rearranged to mimic the object in the artist’s mind. Thus, the final assembled painting cannot be traced to an actual place or plant. A believable reality is presented, but it is entirely of Chaki’s making. The paintings convey strong emotions through gesture and use of colour.
Chaki was born in Athens and lived in Tel Aviv until 1962. He then immigrated to Montreal, where he has spent most of his life. Educated in both Tel Aviv and at the École des Beaux Arts, Paris, he began exhibiting in group exhibitions is 1959 and his work has since been in over 450+ group exhibitions and an impressive number of solo exhibitions. His work is collected all over the world, in both private and public collections. From 1967 to 1989, Chaki was the head of Painting and Drawing at the Saidye Bronfman Centre.
A skilled colourist, Chaki has painted landscapes since the 1970s and is always mining the theme for new inspiration. Landscapes and still-lifes are created by selecting commonly known elements of nature that are rearranged to mimic the object in the artist’s mind. Thus, the final assembled painting cannot be traced to an actual place or plant. A believable reality is presented, but it is entirely of Chaki’s making. The paintings convey strong emotions through gesture and use of colour.
On Chaki’s paintings, Peter Clothier, an LA based art critic states, “Painted not from real vistas but from a personal inner vision, Chaki’s pictures are huge and hot, emerging from the artist’s engagement with his medium on the canvas. The gestural quality of their composition suggests that they are not intended to tell us more about the world out-there, but rather about art’s power to create its own reality…”
