Assadour Bezdikian

Assadour Bezdikian was born in Bourj Hammoud in the northern suburbs of Beirut in 1943. He took private painting lessons with Paul Guiragossian, joined the studio of Lebanese-Armenian painter Guvder, and later enrolled in art classes taught by Lebanese painter Jean Khalifé at the Italian Cultural Center in Beirut. A scholarship from the Italian government supported his training in painting and engraving at the Pietro Vannucci Academy in Perugia Italy in the summers of 1962 and 1963. He then received a scholarship from the Lebanese Ministry of Culture to study at L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1964 to 1967. During the same period, he trained in the studio of Lucien Coutaud in Paris. In Beirut, his work was shown at Sursock Museum’s Salons d’Automne (1962, 1963, 1964), Gallery One (1963, 1964), Galerie L’Amateur (1966, 1969) and Modulart (1972, 1975). He illustrated several publications and won numerous international awards, including the Gold Medal at the Terza Biennale Internationale Della Grafica d’Arte, Florence (1972); the Silver Medal at the Biennale Internationale de l’Estampe, Epinal, France (1973) and the Grand Prix de la Ville de Paris (1984). He was honored with a retrospective at the Sursock Museum in 2016. He lives and works in Paris.