Charles Garabedian

Now in his nineties, American painter Charles Garabedian is hardly a household name. But he is a highly influential artist whose works are collected by LACMA, the Met, MoMA, the Whitney, the Corcoran and the Smithsonian, among other institutions, and the subject of this extensively illustrated exhibition catalog from the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. This revelatory group of intimate representational paintings and drawings - from Garabedian's first museum show in almost 30 years - explores themes of war, music, the body, dismemberment, heroism, comic pretension, love and death. An exciting discovery of surprising importance.