Tree Person

Artist Zubel Kachadoorian (American, 1926 - 2002)

Date1962

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsImage Size: 45 × 40 7/8 in. (114.3 × 103.8 cm) Frame Size: 46 3/8 × 42 1/4 in. (117.8 × 107.3 cm)

ClassificationsPainting

Object numberUAC2147

DescriptionBorn in Detroit in 1924, well known artist Zubel Kachadoorian has traveled and taught in a myriad of places, both nationally and internationally. After graduating from Fordson High School and attending several Fine Arts Schools, he began working at the Scarab Club with Francis de Erdely and was involved in the Cass Corridor Movement. Along with his teaching position at Wayne State University, he also taught at several other fine art schools, such as the Colorado Fine Arts Center, the Chicago Art Institute School, Norton Gallery School in Florida, the Oxbow School of Painting in Saugatuck, Michigan, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and sculpture in Maine. He won several major international awards and fellowships, such as the Prix-de Rome Fellowship, the American Academy in Rome, the Richard and Linda Rosenthal Award, and the National Institute of Arts and letters, to name a few. He was well-traveled and studied and worked in both Europe and Africa, specifically in Italy, Greece, France, Spain, and North Africa.

His earlier works were mostly paintings that depicted his childhood neighborhood, the natural world, and familial units, with a dark, almost monochromatic color palette, and have been likened to Renaissance paintings that have been “darkened by centuries of grime and ill-advised varnish.” His later works in the 1980s show a distinctly lighter color palette, while the content became more abstract, before returning to the dark and gritty look of his earliest pieces. This piece, Tree Person, from 1962, would definitely fit into that dark and monochromatic period. Upon first impression, one can see what looks like a human figure reclining on some sort of seat or hammock. The texture of the human body and the seat he resides on is rough, gritty, and dirty, almost as if he is indeed a tree person and has just sprung from a tree or from deep in the earth. The color palette, various shades of brown with some grey in the background and pops of white, looks like it was applied in a quick and sketchy fashion, almost haphazardly, until you look closer and begin to understand the human body that is slowly coming into focus. You gradually see two legs dangling over the grey expanse below, the body leaning slightly in one direction and an arm tossed over the edge of the seat, a familiar pose that the viewer has undoubtedly copied many times in their own daily life, yet here the familiarity is twisted and distorted. Though there is a hint of an upper arm on the other side of the body, it is subsumed into the unclear mess of browns and greys of the seat as well as the wild brushstrokes emanating from the figure itself. Because the head of the figure is veiled in layers of crisscrossing brushstrokes of brown and black, you can barely make it out, but if you look hard enough you might be able to see two eyes and a nose, gazing back at you.
Kachadoorian’s works can be found at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Smithsonian, the Tate Gallery in London, in the University of Michigan collection and the Ball State University collection in Indiana, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Flint Institute of Arts.

Written by Kayla Plenda

1. “Zubel Kachadoorian,” Tribes of the Cass Corridor, 2002, https://corridortribe.com/obits/zubel_kechadoorian
2. “Zubel Kachadoorian,” Contemporary Art Society, 2026, https://contemporaryartsociety.org/artists/zubel-kachadoorian
3. Michael H. Hodges, “Zubel Kachadoorian’s Cass Corridor on Display at DAM,” Oct. 12, 2016, https://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/arts/2016/10/12/zubel-kachadoorian-dam/91950920/
4,“Zubel Kachadoorian,” Tribes of the Cass Corridor
5. Michael H. Hodges, “Zubel Kachadoorian’s Cass Corridor on Display at DAM”
6. Michael H. Hodges, “Zubel Kachadoorian’s Cass Corridor on Display at DAM”
7.“Zubel Kachadoorian,” Tribes of the Cass Corridor
8.“Zubel Kachadoorian,” Art Institute of Chicago, https://www.artic.edu/artists/35174/zubel-kachadoorian
9. “Zubel Kachadoorian,” Flint Institute of Arts, https://collections.flintarts.org/people/86/zubel-kachadoorian/objects

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