By Ken Hall

Every now and then, it's important to revisit an artist who was blessed with enormous gifts but, for whatever reason, slipped into obscurity after (or even before) his death.

Such is the case with Sacha Moldovan (1901-82), the Russian-born Expressionist painter who emigrated to the United States, studied in Paris and befriended some of the most renowned artists of the day, developed a powerful style that was uniquely his own, was shown all over Europe and later the United States, and died in an institution with barely a notice of his passing.

The noted art critic Marla Berg once said of Moldovan, "Had van Gogh painted Matisse's pictures while dreaming of Chagall, the result would have been the works of Sacha Moldovan."

Ironically, Moldovan was famously mistrustful of critics. Dealers, too. This cynical streak in his temperament proved, in part, to be his undoing.

"Who cares to analyze this?" he asked with scorn. "Just paint pictures and enjoy it."

One time he said to a dealer, "Most of you buy paintings for either sentiment, status or greed. So it doesn't really make a difference what I sell. I paint to fulfill myself, and to understand a little more about nature and life."

Moldovan was known for holding on to his best works, as if they were his children, refusing to part with them. Or, if pressed, he would name a price that was so ridiculously high he knew the customer would never meet it. Dealers usually got his table scraps -- works he thought were subpar.
Still, the price of an original Moldovan escalated, in spite of his indifference. In the early 1970s, the Allan Rich Galleries on Madison Avenue in New York sold Moldovans for between $6,000 and $8,000. In 1984, Judge Galleries sold an original for $18,000. The same price was realized at a show that year in Durham, N.C., which juxtaposed Moldovan's work (favorably) against Marc Chagall's. In fact, the two knew each other. Both were Russian born.

By the late '80s, the Eisenberg Gallery in Los Angeles was selling Moldovan originals for $25,000 to $35,000. And in 1991, Hammer Galleries in Manhattan pushed the envelope, selling originals at a one-man show for more than $50,000.

Since then, the artist has been in an eclipse and no one is really representing him in earnest. An online entity -- Artique -- is currently offering a half-dozen original paintings ranging in price from $18,000 to $24,000. And it's possible to buy giclees on canvas and paper of Moldovan's work (see boxed sidebar).

Moldovan believed the primary function of painting was to create works of art that would give pleasure and be enjoyed by those with visual literacy. By using the styles of artists he admired -- such as Matisse, van Gogh and Soutine -- as a point of departure, he developed paintings that were vibrant in color and varied in texture.

The older he got, the better he got. He really hit his stride in his 50s and 60s, when his paintings took on an Expressionistic tone, a la George Rouault and Chaim Soutine. His artistic handwriting was similar to Soutine's: the arbitrary use of color, thick impasto, black outlining, rejection of a naturalistic expression of nature, and expression of the world through instinct and emotion.

"Many artists influenced me," Moldovan once said. "As a young man I went to the museums. There, I found my fathers and grandfathers -- Matisse, Soutine and Bonnard." But, he added, "I was influenced by van Gogh more than anyone else."

Stylistically, perhaps. But while the master van Gogh turned inward for inspiration and genius, Moldovan seemed to react and lash out at the external world. He went through his entire life never having loved another, although a brief liaison during World War II did produce a daughter, Wendy, upon whom he lavished much affection.

Sacha Moldovan was born Aloysha Schneider on Nov. 4, 1901, in Kishinev, Russia, near the Black Sea. He was given the nickname Sacha and, years later, after his parents divorced, he legally changed his last name to Moldovan, his mother's maiden name. She was his early artistic inspiration, being a painter herself. She encouraged her son and bought him materials to make pictures.

Being Jewish, the family felt the heat of persecution during Czarist Russia and fled to America on the eve of the Russian Revolution. They landed in New York, taking up residency in Manhattan's Lower East Side. Young Sacha studied art, first at the Cooper Union School of Art and later at the National Academy of Design.

In the early 1920s, Moldovan moved to Paris to study painting, enrolling at the Academie Julian and the Academie de las Grande Chaumiere. He met the French master Henri Matisse, who rumor has it took him under his wing and tutored the young talent. Same with Pierre Bonnard.

His early style was not so much avant-garde and Surrealist (popular genres at the time) as it leaned toward the Fauve paintings of turn-of-the-century France. His obvious influences were Matisse, Maurice Vlaminck, van Gogh and, of course, Soutine.

By the late 1920s, Moldovan was indulging in landscape, figurative and still life paintings that celebrated the pleasures of the senses. Brilliant colors, boldly outlined forms and thickly applied paint characterized the style he adopted and refined over the course of his life.

Why Moldovan was so mistrustful of the very people who could have helped him the most -- the dealers and art critics -- will remain a mystery for the ages. Consider this passage, written by the highly respected Parisian art critic Andre Salmon in 1930:

"I would wish that Moldovan not read any criticism, that he retain only one piece of advice: never study van Gogh, nor frequent with the painters of his age, except at the cafe. He draws by instinct and already his palette is perfectly his own."

An Evening Stroll

Park Bench

Portrait of a Lady

Floral Still Life With Fruit

Men Coming and Going

Veronique Reading