Garo Antreasian Armenian-American, 1922-2018

Garo Antreasian (1922 – 2018) was an American printmaker and educator as well as a co-founder of the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles, California. 

Committed to a geometric formal language since the mid-1960s, Antreasian spoke that language idiosyncratically, in a rich, modulated voice. Although his compositions can be forthright and simple, they never confront the eye with minimalist austerity. Rather, they brim with lovingly fashioned and rhythmically repeated detail. The works Antreasian fashioned from inlaid laminated wood reflect upon the exquisite craftsmanship of his sources, divorcing them from their functional origin. Similarly, his many works reliant on script - Arabic, Armenian, Latin - free line and contour from the rigors of verbal communication, allowing various alphabets to run free in a neo-Futurist “parole in libertà."