
Sam Szafran Obsessions of a painter,
Orangerie Museum
IN TOWN - In TOWN
The genius staircase spirit of painter Sam Szafran
By Laure Vernière*

Sam Szafran, Laure Vernière, Pucci de Rossi 1981 ©AnnGarde
I first came to know Szafran's work through Anne Garde, who in the 1980s was the appointed photographer of the multiplied and dizzying series of the staircase at 54 rue de Seine, where the poet Fouad-El Etr, creator of the magazine La Délirante, a close friend and accomplice of Sam Szafran, published. What delighted me is how the pictorial space moved and attracted the ramps, the skylights, the windows and the trees opposite. Offbeat realism, reorganized in perpetual motion, became the creation of an unknown world of incredible modernity.
When I met Sam, I understood that he was an integral part of these geometric and wandering staircase dances, that his brain, his hand, his legs, his eyes and his laughter, which I still hear today, controlled a demanding and diabolical choreography.
Later, his obsession with oversized plants will be a violent song of ferocious love for nature. Szafran could be violent and ferocious, but generous, like nature!

Staircase, pastel on paper 1981-1982
Untitled, (rue de Seine staircase) pastel on paper 1981


Staircase with Jacques Kerchache, François Barbâtre, and the artist 1993
watercolor on silk
staircase, watercolor on silk


Interior II, studio in rue Crussol
Interior, studio in rue Crussol


Watercolor, charcoal, pencil on paper
Greenhouses and foliage - the invasion from within


view of the exhibition
Lilette in the plants, 1987, Watercolour, charcoal, pencil on paper

vegetation in the studio, 1980 Watercolor and pastel on paper

Untitled, Lilette in the plants Watercolor, charcoal, pencil on paper


Tribute to Jean Clair for his exhibition Cosmos
Orangerie Museum, Paris - Sam Szafran, OBSESSIONS OF A PAINTER
Until January 16, 2023
Police station Drost
*Laure Vernière a travel writer for the texts accompanying the photographs of Anne Garde, but also a poet and painter: collages, paintings, visual poems, polaroids which are exhibited in France and abroad.
