BIOGRAPHY
Raphy was a French painter of Armenian origin, born on November 9, 1926 in Neuilly-sur-Marne and died on March 27, 2022 in Saint-Nazaire. In the late 1950s, he trained with Henri-Georges Adam, who worked with Giacometti and Picasso. Until the late 1960s, he painted without exhibiting. [...]
PORTRAIT by Henri Heraut
[...] He shows us, to begin with, his first figurative works. A determined mind par excellence (like any scientist), he quickly realizes that this was not his path. "I was born abstract," he tells us; immediately, moreover, his successes in this genre are revealed to be dazzling, although his research remains continuous. He has his own way of working. [...]
Outline of a rapprochement between RAPHY's painting and Olivier MESSIAEN's music by Françoise Wolf
[...] These common motivations and themes reveal a cosmic dimension to Raphy's painting and Messiaen's music. It is necessary, of course, to make a distinction between Messiaen, who defines himself as a theological musician whose temperament is deeply rooted in a very strict and dogmatic Catholicism, on the one hand, and Raphy, on the other hand, who considers religion in a much broader sense, I believe. [...]
PRESS & REVIEWS
Raphy is the art of today
Michel Boutin
Review for L'Amateur d'Art
Article published in L'Amateur d'Art No. 634, November 1978
[...] Raphy's painting immediately grabs the viewer with the perfection of the technique. A delicious material, without ever an exaggeration of thickness tainting with suspicion the play of highlights on tones most often obtained through the skillful use of glazing. [...]
Raphy à la Mairie du IIème
Michel Boutin
Review for L'Amateur d'Art
Article published in L'Amateur d'Art No. 702, March 1984
[...] The atmosphere created by all the works presented could be summed up with the word "dazzling."
If Raphy describes himself as self-taught, this in no way implies that his art has any shortcomings, because on the contrary [...]
Raphy, from dream to reality
[...] In this astonishing whirlwind of light or the abstraction of geometric shapes in movement, I contemplate the work of this artist who invites me to an infinite quest for spirituality and constantly renewed meditation. It would take a lot of artistic bad faith not to recognize the genius, the talent, the total harmony achieved in the work and the organization of the forms that appear to us in a play of primary colors.[...]
Christophe GALLARD
Excerpts from his thesis on contemporary art
May 1992
Raphy - Beyond the Visible
[...] Primary colors strongly opposing or complementing each other through the hyphen of passages in broken tones, paste with gem-like shards, gestural graphics which, coming from the mind, carry the hand, rhythm in a time of perpetual movement; this is the style which, to be totally what it is, does not resemble any other [...]
Jacques Dubois
Review for L'Amateur d'Art
Article published in L'Amateur d'Art No. 636, December 1978
“It's a real revelation! Raphy, although a chemical engineer by profession, is a truly accomplished painter, one of the best even, among the abstract trend, with what grace, what majesty also unfold, intertwine, marry his circles, his volutes, and what charming colors! We breathe in spring with full lungs.”“We are dazzled, from the start, by the magnificence of the colors. The tones, brought to their maximum, nevertheless remain light in intensity, transparent. It's a spell..."“Bird themes often recur in his works, sometimes mystical, which lead him to the threshold of paradise with marvelous lights. Solar circles abound as often as birds... His painting is very lyrical, warm, and it is even difficult to find analogies to him among the work of various contemporary abstract painters.”
Henri HERAUT
Criticism to the Art Lover
April 1972 - 1st personal exhibition at the RG gallery rue Bonaparte
Light and flight are the essential characteristics of this artist's work. The bird returns, haunting, in many compositions where the brushing of abstraction is a poetic game and a skilful assembly of shapes, streams of light, projections of dreams vibrating with spirituality, warmth, softness. “Summer”, “Vers la source”, “Vent d'orage for string orchestra”, “Véga” (large round canvas quite explosive), “Chanson de Printemps” (with its explosion of yellow), and many other fabrics are essential. There is, in this very liberated but very well constructed painting, a contribution of floral, winged and terrestrial elements which vibrate intensely. Impression of life, joy, peace.
Reva REMY
Article published in La revue moderne
Raphy knows how to animate the surfaces of his compositions first by a subtle interplay of matter and then by the broad rhythms that he intelligently releases from motifs stemming as much from reality as from his imagination. Using no depth effect, he suggests the perspective of his constructions only through color, a nuanced color, never bastardized.
John Chabanon
Article published in The Painter
Raphy has a transcendent vision of reality which he renders augmented with a deep meaning. He has forged a pictorial language of his own which allows him to transcribe the spectacle of the world as he pleases.
Using skilful combinations of arabesques and harmonious tonal ratios, the artist creates works of dazzling polychromy that are both spiritual and moving.
The painter's incessant meditations on his art allowed him to go ever further along the path of simplification and purity.
Sparkling colors with their amazing green blues fill the canvas and make it an explosion of intensity.
Everything is said with means reduced to their strictest essence. Light reigns in this universe. It is she who gives it all its rhythm, all its music. Above all a poet, Raphy has the key to an enchanted world of magic and legends dear to old Welsh tales. His winged fantasies are full of iridescent gleams and arpeggios close to Bach's fugues or Schubert's melodies. A fervent hymn dedicated to the moon, the earth and the tree rises from this universe. Alternately, bitter and ferocious in “Genocide“, tender or light in “Chants d'oiseau“ Raphy has the gift of disorienting us and leading us to splendid elsewhere. His poetic vision is always accompanied by fervor. This is why he knew how to convince and move us.
Hermance MOLINA
Article published in Vision sur les Arts n°129 October-November 1979