Michael Azgour is an artist and educator whose work addresses the impact of digital imagery on contemporary culture. His paintings combine evocative, expressive representation with geometric abstraction, reflecting upon memory, technology, and change. Azgour’s award-winning paintings have been exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States and Europe, including solo shows at the Art Museum of Los Gatos, CA and Hohmann Fine Art in Palm Desert, CA. His work is part of dozens of collections, including a recent commission by Stanford’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. Michael has exhibited alongside a number of highly respected artists such as Joan Brown, Richard Diebenkorn, Elmer Bischoff, and Nathan Oliveira. Azgour regularly delivers public presentations, workshops, and artist presentations, including TEDx Krakow in 2017. Michael teaches drawing and painting courses at Stanford University.
“Azgour’s works are expressive and geometric abstractions informed by an involved process that combines a strategic, realistic technique with pattern and repetition and the muse of accidental surprise. His figures seemingly float with one foot firmly planted in the present while the other wafts into the past. Paint becomes pixel, blur or distortion mirroring the disconnected snapshots and video clips that populate our social media profiles. He challenges the viewer’s interpretation by combining unrelated imagery in the same composition. Although the disparate visuals and juxtaposed compositions appear random, they are in fact bits of narrative from the artist’s own life and travels.” –Kimberly Nichols