Armenian-born post-impressionist painter and engraver Edgar Chahine was born in Constantinople (Ottoman Empire) in 1874. He began his studies in his native city, where his father was a director of the Ottoman Bank. His teacher, the painter Milkon Tiratzuyan, advised him to continue his artistic training in Italy. In 1892, Chahine attended the Moorat-Raphael College in Venice, run by the...

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  Biography of Edgar Chahine

  Armenian-born post-impressionist painter and engraver Edgar Chahine was born in Constantinople (Ottoman Empire) in 1874. He began his studies in his native city, where his father was a director of the Ottoman Bank. His teacher, the painter Milkon Tiratzuyan, advised him to continue his artistic training in Italy. In 1892, Chahine attended the Moorat-Raphael College in Venice, run by the Mekhitarist Fathers, while at the same time studying with painter Antonio Paoletti and sculptor Antonio del Zotto at the Academy of Fine Arts. He began with pastels, then switched to etching. Edgar Chahine settled permanently in Paris in 1895 and completed his training at the Académie Julian. The young artist immediately exhibited at Salons (in France and Italy) and won several prizes.
  Naturalized French in 1925 at the age of 51, Chahine was an accomplished and recognized artist. From the 1930s onwards, he renewed his technique and experimented with tempera. He often used his wife as a model to depict delicate figures of nude women, creating a variety of female nude poses using different techniques (pastel, etching, painting) as if to exhaust the subject. Edgar Chahine's silky, velvety pastel nudes are reminiscent of those by Degas and Suzanne Valadon.Humanism, original vision, poetry, precision and expressiveness of line are further hallmarks of his art. His etchings depicting the construction of the Paris metro, street workers and scenes of popular festivities are distinguished by their dynamism generated by contrasting blacks and whites. Portraiture, one of the artist's favorite genres, is characterized by virtuoso drawing and an understanding of the model's inner world.Edgar Chahine illustrated numerous works with his engravings (Anatole France, Octave Mirbeau, Gabriel Mourey, Maurice Barrès, Gustave Flaubert, Colette, J.K. Huysmans, Paul Verlaine). Throughout his life, the artist was also a fervent defender of Armenia, often working on a theme dear to his heart. He maintained particularly close relations with his ancestral homeland, to which he donated his best works.Edgar Chahine left a substantial body of work comprising 450 engravings, 430 illustrations and 300 paintings, pastels and drawings.Edgar Chahine died in Paris in 1947.
  

  

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