Michael Kachan

Michael Kachan was born in the Armenian countryside, where he excelled as an art student before graduating with honors from the Kiev Institute of Arts in 1985. Before immigrating to Israel in 1992, he was selected to represent the Ukrainian Painters League in a group exhibition that toured major cities throughout the former Soviet Union and abroad. During that period, he also created several monumental installations for various institutions.
A playful and festive atmosphere characterizes Kachan’s work, with vibrant, celebratory colors and subjects centered on musicians, lovers, and dreamers. His style suggests influences from twentieth-century master Marc Chagall and Bolivian naïve artist Rodo Graciela Boulanger. Working mostly in acrylic on canvas, he builds up surfaces with deep sculpted textures and overlays of pigments. He interprets his paintings into original serigraphs and hand-embellished serigraphs on canvas, achieving similar textural effects and luminosity of color through a combination of varnished inks and glazes.
His accomplishments include exhibitions at the Theresa Coshin Gallery in Paris in 1989, the Jewish Community Center in Rome in 1992, Binyanei Hauma in Jerusalem in 1992-93, group shows in Brighton, England in 1993 and Hamburg, Germany in 1994, the Avarim Art Gallery in Tel-Aviv, Israel in 1995, and Art Expo in New York in 1995. Kachan is represented by Park West Gallery.