Zubel Kachadoorian

Born in Detroit, Michigan in 1924, Kachadoorian received his first art training from local portraitist and still-life artist Helen Maynard White. He studied with Carlos Lopez at the Meinzinger Art School in Detroit (1943-44) and privately with Francis De Erdely. He attended summer sessions with Francis Chapin at the Oxbow Summer School of Painting as well as the Skowhegan School in Maine and the Colorado Fine Arts Center. Kachadoorian lived in France from 1950-1952, simultaneously maintaining a studio in New York City. In 1956 he was awarded the Prix de Rome, which enabled him to study at the American Academy in Rome from 1956-1960.

Upon his return to the United States he accepted a teaching position at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He went on to teach at the Norton Gallery School in West Palm Beach, Florida; the Birmingham-Bloomfield Art Association ; Oxbow Summer School of Painting; Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; and Wayne State University from 1967-1973.

Kachadoorian also served as artist-in-residence at the Jesse Besser Museum in Alpena, under the auspices of the Michigan Council for the Arts, and in his capacity as art supervisor of the Detroit Repertory Theatre received two grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. Essentially a figure painter, Kachadoorian works in an Abstract Expressionist style.