Sam SZAFRAN (1934-2019) - Lot 178

Sam SZAFRAN (1934-2019) The staircase, 1980 Pastel on paper signed in red lower right 34 x 20 cm (on view) Modern frame This work will appear in the Sam Szafran catalog raisonné currently being prepared by Julia Drost. Condition report available on request from contact@neo-encheres.com A copy of the purchase invoice may be presented to the buyer. PROVENANCE Eric and Doris BEYERSDORF collection, then private collection in Paris. BIBLIOGRAPHY - Collection Eric et Doris BEYERSDORF, n°188, pp. 194 - For a work of almost identical composition, but with a wider framing than our painting, see below: Julia DROST and Werner SPIES, Sam Szafran, FEI (exhibition at the Max Ernst Museum, Brühl), 2010: see n°38, pp. 103 (circa 1980) NOTICE "I've always lived on stairs". In his first staircase series (1973-1980), Sam Szafran exploits the helical structure and deformation of spaces in an anamorphic vision, like an anxious inhabitant observing the comings and goings of the building through a peephole. In a bid to transpose both the exterior and interior of the view, he flattens and submits the space to his painting. He almost systematically places a man dressed in a sky-blue suit, descending the floors below, witness and victim of this helical distortion, a ghostly silhouette recalling both wandering and presence. This tall, lanky man, who blends into the crowd, reminds us that the place is not deserted; could he be a simple innocent or a future informer? Sam Szafran, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants, escaped the Vel d'Hiv raid and lived a precarious life in hiding in the countryside between 1940 and 1944, before being arrested and deported to Drancy before the Americans liberated him. The staircase, the only point of access to a possible hiding place as well as being a place of passage, is for him a source of anxiety but also the only possible escape. In his staircases, Szafran regularly places a black door halfway up, a sort of "inevitable station of initiation" referring to this painful episode. The trauma of the Second World War shook Szafran to the core, spoiling his childhood and turning him towards a very introspective and solitary production of his life. Indeed, Szafran lost interest in the world in which he lived and its debates. He dislikes traveling, suffers from vertigo and rarely leaves his studio. This place, which everyone frequents, serves as an outlet for his fears. In the course of the exhibitions around Sam Szafran, a parallel is drawn by various authors between sight, music and the theme of the staircase. Each step composes a score, something that adds up to a unique whole, like a chromatic spectrum or a musical composition. Szafran is passionate about music, and likes to evoke the crescendos and nuances of a scale. At the end of his second series of staircases, Szafran concretizes his journey and his acceptance by reducing the staircase to the line of the banister and a few elements on a plain background, which is unmistakably similar to a musical note from a graphic point of view.