Samson Flexor

Samson Flexor (1907, Soroca, Bessarabia - 1971, São Paulo, Brazil) was the leader and teacher of the school-studio and organization of artists in São Paulo, known as Atelier Abstração (1951). The artist, born in Bessarabia, was educated at a private school in Soroca, then at the Odessa Art School, and then in Bucharest, where his entire family moved. In 1922-1924, he studied at the Royal Belgian Academy of Fine Arts (Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts) in Brussels and, from 1924, at the National School of Fine Arts in Paris (École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts) under "Lucien Simon"; in Paris, he also attended lectures on art history at the Sorbonne University. He moved from France to Brazil in 1948, where he immediately began exhibiting his paintings, which at the time demonstrated the influence of the School of Paris. Shortly after settling in São Paulo, the artist changed course, and his work reflected geometric abstraction. This shift was partly influenced by Flexor's observation of the dizzying pace of growth and development of São Paulo as a forward-looking city. His compositions, based on virtual volumes generated by finely modulated color sequences, set the standard for many other abstract artists of the period.