REVIEWS
RAPHY is the art of today
It is not the first time that in these columns we draw attention to this certainty: the creators who are creating the great art of our time are not those on whom are shone in the spotlight of the news.
We also know that the reader is eager to know the names of those who seem called to receive the consecration of this infallible art critic that is time.
The contact that has just been established between Raphy and us is too recent for us to be able to consider him with certainty as one of posterity's chosen ones, although we are not far from it, but what we can affirm is that what we have just seen in the presence of his exhibited work encourages us to take him very seriously.
As it appears that he, the painter, takes very seriously his job as a creative man, making it a total gift of his free time and all that he carries within him of possibilities of expression. It was not he who told us, but the thirty or so canvases hung on the picture rails of the Raincy art gallery quickly convinced us of it and we appreciated that Raphy, welcoming us during the visit to his exhibition , speaks only simple words of welcome.
Real paint doesn't need spiel.
This one immediately seizes the spectator by the perfection of the technique. Tasty material, without ever an exaggeration of thickness coming to taint with suspicion the play of the highlights on the tones obtained most often thanks to the skilful use of the glaze.
This masterful manipulation of color is certainly a major asset, but it is only one of the many assets at the author's disposal. His manual ease allows him to express without hesitation an inner poetry which, as far as we are concerned, has deeply touched us.
Real or unreal shapes, objects suggested more than described, interweaving of colored rhythms, subtle matter en counterpoint. Depth without planes. Lightness without sentimentality. And behind all this an infallible structure, the fruit no doubt of a very long previous work.
Nothing eccentric but nothing deja vu. All this smacks of authenticity, originality, honesty. What Raphy does is today's art, unlike anything painted in the past, but not denying that past.
Some of the great compositions communicate a happiness that is as far removed from cheerfulness as the light that bathes the work is removed from lighting.
In short, it is this search for a light obtained without the use of contrasts, therefore without resorting to black, which is the great characteristic of the exhibition which has just been shown at Raincy.
All this is the result of a long-term effort. We spoke earlier about the “free time” that Raphy had to paint. It is that this exceptional man, convinced without boasting of the importance of his mission as an artist, assumes like everyone else daily life by practicing a profession in itself already very absorbing and which has nothing to do with the 'art.
He sacrificed everything to painting. He deserves that it brings him the reward that so much courage, so much talent deserves.
The artist accomplishes himself in his totality, takes his work to the end of its conception and sometimes beyond, when he carries within himself, as the essential driving force of his approach, the spiritual intensity._cc781905-5cde- 3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ The imperatives then imposed on the creator dominate all the contingencies, mainly those which consist in taming the technique intended to be used for expression.
The man with the brush, in this case Raphy, no longer needs to wait for inspiration. She is in him and he can write his pictorial poem with the simplicity of the embodied gesture.
Each of the paintings that the visitor will discover at the town hall of the 2nd arrondissement carries in itself a part of this mystical passion, the translation of which by forms and colors inscribed on the canvas was for Raphy an imperious necessity.
Volutes, arabesques, masses and dustings, generators of light and emotions, express the inner world open to the other, ours, the everyday world to which the revelation of the mystery of a sensitive heart brings a rare quality of enchantment.
Michael BOUTIN
Director and Editor-in-Chief of L'Amateur d'Art
Article published in L'Amateur d'Art n°634 of November 1, 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
The artist accomplishes himself in his totality, takes his work to the end of its conception and sometimes beyond, when he carries within himself, as the essential driving force of his approach, the spiritual intensity._cc781905-5cde- 3194-bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ The imperatives then imposed on the creator dominate all the contingencies, mainly those which consist in taming the technique intended to be used for expression.
The man with the brush, in this case Raphy, no longer needs to wait for inspiration. She is in him and he can write his pictorial poem with the simplicity of the embodied gesture.
Each of the paintings that the visitor will discover at the town hall of the 2nd arrondissement carries in itself a part of this mystical passion, the translation of which by forms and colors inscribed on the canvas was for Raphy an imperious necessity.
(...)
Volutes, arabesques, masses and dustings, generators of light and emotions, express the inner world open to the other, ours, the everyday world to which the revelation of the mystery of a sensitive heart brings a rare quality of enchantment.
Michael BOUTIN
Director and Editor-in-Chief of L'Amateur d'Art
Article published in L'Amateur d'Art n°702 March 1984
RAPHY
Beyond the Visible
It's not enough to look at the sky, you have to go higher, aim for the ALL and, carried on the wings of the imagination, fly in the cosmic immensity, rub shoulders with the thunderbolts in power before 'storm and thunder thunder', borrow "The path that climbs to the blue star", be dazzled by a universe "all fire, all flame", sink into the spaces stellar where time is abolished, where forms are becoming and in suspense, colors.
And, harvest made of dreamlike visions, return to the land of men, to apprehend the mysterious “Spirit of the forest“, vibrate entirely to the rhythm of the “Song of the Incas“, smile at the renewal when “Time has left its coat wind, cold and rain“, pray with a “Christmas carol“, smile with that of the birds of “Paradise for my parents“. But also to maintain the flame in memory of the innumerable victims of “Genocide”, to listen to Nana Mouskouri when she sings “The time of the cherries” of a poet named Jean-Baptiste Clément who lost his love in the bloody days of the Commune. So much for the spirit of Raphy's art.
Primary colors opposing each other with force or complementing each other by the hyphen of passages in broken tones, paste with shards of gemstones, gestural graphics which, coming from the mind carries the hand, rhythm on a time of perpetual movement; here is for the invoice which to be completely what it is, does not resemble any other.
Are we witnessing a Raphy phenomenon? History will tell. Is the painting we have seen so exceptional that to write it, we measure the vanity of words?
To that we answer, YES.
Jacques DUBOIS
Criticism to the Art Lover
Article published in L'Amateur d'Art n°636 of December 1, 1978
The magical world of Raphy
Wealth of the texture worked in depth, brilliance of the harmonies of complementary colors that unite in chromatic progression of skilfully modulated passages, rigorous ordering of the volumes, fair distribution of the areas of shadow and light, of cold and warm tones tuned in tune with the a dominant. And, in spite of all this coming from a very long period of reflection, respect for a rigorous discipline, a desire to build the space of which he is the architect, a painting which from the outset seems to be the result of spontaneity: that of Raphy, of whom we know that following Boileau's advice, twenty times on the easel, he handed over his work. But in truth is it so surprising this painting which, for having been slowly matured, seems to stem from the gestural?
Certainly not, since, as well, any motif or subject objectively perceived in the present moment is extended in Raphy to the second degree, that of the subjective, where it acquires dimensions and functions that the imagination lends it. Thus, the exterior landscape becomes an interior landscape, such a character lives an action taking place in the painter's secret self, who then fixes the image of it on the canvas. Everything seems to be explained by this spontaneity testifying to a great movement of emotion, an escape into a waking dream, while reason does not lose its rights there. Hoffman called this “inspiration” this moment when, inventing a fantastic tale, he never sacrificed the rules of writing to it. Painter of a parallel universe in which beauty is embodied in all beings and all things, Raphy introduces us to the immensity of his spaces where the light emanating from
The “Chinese lantern and stardust”, makes us witness the apotheosis of the “Aurora”_cc781905-5cde-3194-bb3b- 136bad5cf58d_ when yellows, oranges, mauves, blues and greens in infinite shades mingle, while the “Légende du Léman” treated in cold colors (blue-green) matches the minor mode of some mountain melody. Sometimes, returning to the real form, Raphy gives it a character, here, timeless, there, fantastic. These are then: “The king of the gnomes” (mysterious face of the master of evil spirits), “Fairy and Mermaid” (two female faces measuring their evil power with their eyes). “Lady red” whose dress matches the greens of the space in which she seems to be dreaming, “La belle meunière” evoking the series of songs by which Schubert celebrated her beauty, other subjects including a splendid triptych entitled “The moon told me one day”.
Happy Raphy to whom the nocturnal star entrusts so many pretty things, and happy the spectators to whom the artist offers them.
Such appeared to us the exhibition of this painter, recently invited by the town hall of the 2nd arrondissement within the framework of the cultural program of the city of Paris.
Jacques DUBOIS
Criticism to the Art Lover
Article published in L'Amateur d'Art n°703 April 1984
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
Raphy, from dream to reality
When I discovered Raphy's creations during the summer of 84, I was already overwhelmed by the poetic power of color tonality.
My gaze having gradually opened up to contemporary creation, I therefore had the privilege of meeting the master in his studio in La Baule on a Sunday in May 92. I was touched by the humility of this artist and by his passionate interest in all forms of artistic expression of thought.
We had a long conversation on the history of contemporary art by multiplying the essential landmarks which are at the base of the plastic and graphic evolution of these last hundred years: Eternal debate between formal and spiritual, Duchamp and Beuys, impressionism and expressionism, cubism and constructivism… Generating artist and catalyst of suffering…
Raphy is above all our magician of oz, the painter of lights and transparencies brilliantly combining the colors of all the rainbows on earth. He is life itself and his creation is imbued with an extraordinary emotional talent.
Between abstraction, freedom, resurrection, he reveals to us the sacred meaning of existence.
Beyond my first impressions I sought to better understand the progress of this exceptional artist to analyze his work which is worthy of all the interests and all the plastic researches.
To understand Raphy is not to ignore his wounds so as not to hide in the history of humanity the memory of a people mutilated and decimated by the cruelty of men.
Raphy or the recognition of Armenia, crossing the difficult years until the culmination of a rich and inhabited pictorial work of All the Torments but also of all the joys of the existence.
To love Raphy's painting is to love life in its absolute magnificence.
Raphy is not a sad man, his creation is above all a hymn to rediscovered joy. It is the image of beauty exploded in a multitude of chromatic landscapes sublimated by the reborn lyricism of color.
He is the great conductor who organizes the space of his canvases in a ballet and a symphony of scrolls, of geometric elements sprinkled with a visionary light bathed in an eloquent and sublime rhythm.
The Work often refers to the upheavals of our existence and to the earthly phenomena that dress our daily lives.
In this waltz of solitude where the blue color of the ocean tears the canvas in a burst of melancholy indigo, Raphy opens the way to passion for us thanks to a creation mastered and executed with absolute precision and permanent rigor.
Raphy or the vision of a sudden apocalypse between rebirth and an idealized cosmos constantly transfigured by the gem of a surprising imagination.
The painter often used to take up his old canvases to give them a new emotion, each time reaching the paroxysm of perfection.
In this astonishing whirlwind of light or the abstraction of geometric shapes in motion, I contemplate the work of this artist who invites me to an infinite quest for spirituality and meditation constantly renewed. It would take a lot of artistic bad faith not to recognize the genius, the talent, the total harmony obtained in the work and the organization of the forms that appear to us in a play of primary colors.
The man of great generosity infuses his work with broad mystical connotations that reinforce his formal search for a spiritual ideal dominated by the Catholic religion. Raphy, or the miracle of life, of resurrection, dominant themes in Christianity...
He spoke to me at length about the affective and emotive power of music, which emerges as a leitmotif and as obvious in view of his works.
There is no finer tribute than this “Ghost Ship” so dear to Richard Wagner. We can imagine Raphy decorating the theater of Bayreuth* in a requiem of colors and allegories to the glory of its genius creator.
In search of this lost time immortalized by Marcel Proust, nostalgia for the Orient is no longer what it was and the stigmata of exile travel through Raphy's thought and creation._cc781905-5cde-3194- bb3b-136bad5cf58d_ Could painting be an outlet for awakening the feelings of a bygone past? In this no man's land of indifference where the sublime rubs shoulders with the reality of life, the artist weaves the sonic web of our sufferings, our dreams but also our hopes. This is Raphy's magnificent message.
Raphy tells me about Cézanne, Kandinsky, Chagall, his teacher and master Adam… In my eyes, he is the worthy successor of these major artists of the 20th century.
The theme of the bird, the only figurative element of the abstract compositions, would be the only link between our chaotic world, torn apart by violence, and the paradise of this artist.
To live, but to live to love color in this poetic litany where the creation of this exceptional man opens the doors of life and the pages of a philosophical and universal thought to us in a surge of love haloed by the magic of a cry of hope.
“Be the master and the sculptor of yourself” as Nietsche said so well, I would say that talent cannot be invented and that everything is a question of love and work.
* Bayreuth, German city in Bavaria where Richard Wagner had a theater built (the Festspielhaus, financed by Louis II of Bavaria) intended to represent only HIS OPERAS.
Christophe GALARD
Excerpts from his thesis on contemporary art - May 30, 1992