SAM TCHAKALIAN
Painter, Teacher, 1929-2004

"In essence my specific concern in painting is color into form,
using the canvas as a palette, the canvas has a shape, and I make color."

Such statements reflect a desire to refine painting further, to tame through studious formalism, and the artists are legion, north and south. Characteristic are...Sam Tchakalian's conversion of AE (abstract expressionism) into thick fields...
- Peter Plagens, Sunshine Muse: Art of the West Coast, 1945-1970

Tchakalian is a materialist among contemporary painters. His painting expression the faith of the matter of oil paint itself and experience in its use are the last reservoirs of honest discovery a painter has to tap. If they do not yield the pleasures and substance of art, nothing will.
- Kenneth Baker, Introduction to Solo Exhibition Catalogue, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, 1989

Tchakalian's painting consisted entirely of lush, unbroken fields of solid color produced by pouring, rolling, and brushing layer upon layer of oil onto immensely scaled horizantal canvasses. Color and paint itself literally became the content of these paintings, which were essentially elements of architecture.
- Thomas Albright, Art in the San Francisco Bay Area, 1945-1980, University of California Press

The feedback that his art inspires may rest on its ability to project an almost Zen state of mind .... The ability of Tchakalian's work to communicate meaningfully depends almost exclusively on its capacity to project a quality all good art has, that is, a sense of presence.
- Terry St. John, Associate Curator, 1978 Solo Exhibition Oakland Museum

Tchakalian's early work of the 1950's strongly reflected Still's influence...In the early 1960's, his imagery flattened and simplified gradually evolving into broad expanses of intense color.
- Susan Landauer, The San Francisco and the Second Wave, Crocker Art Museum

Education and Teaching
Studied at San Francisco State College, A.A., 1950; B.A., 1952; M.A., 1958. Taught at California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, 1962-1963; College of San Mateo, 1964-1965; California State College, Los Angeles, 1965; San Francisco Art Institute, 1966-2000; University of California, Davis, 1970; University of California, Berkeley, 1979-1980. Guest lecturer, Cooper Union Art School, New York, 1973; Hampshire College, Amherst, 1974; Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, 1974; University of California, Santa Barbara, 1979.

Selected Solo Exhibitions 1945-1975
Dilexi Gallery, San Francisco, 1960, 1963; M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, 1962; Art Unlimited Gallery, San Francisco, 1963; Bolles Gallery, San Francisco, 1966; Balboa Pavilion Gallery, Balboa, California, 1967; San Francisco Museum of Art, 1967; Molly Barnes Gallery, Los Angeles, 1968-1969; Emmanuel Walter Art Gallery, San Francisco Art Institute, 1970; Quay Gallery, San Francisco, 1972-1973; Ruth Braustein/Quay Gallery, New York City, 1975.

Selected Group Exhibitions 1945-1975
77th-80th Annual Painting and Sculpture Exhibition of the San Francisco Art Association (from 1961, the San Francisco Art Institute) at the San Francisco Museum of Art, 1958-1961; 82nd Annual, 1963; First-Fifth Winter Invitational, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 1960-1964; The Artist's Environment: West Coast, Amon Carter Museum, UCLA Art Galleries and Oakland Art Gallery, 1962-1963; The Art Bank of the San Francisco Art Institute, 1962-1964, 1966.

Selected Permanent Museum Collections
Bakersfield Art Museum; Fresno Art Museum; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco; Oakland Museum of Art; San Jose Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art.