Serge Sédrac archive

About the archive

In 2019, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art acquired the archive of the artist Serge Sédrac, who was a member of the French Society of Independent Artists. The archive contains materials related to Sédrac’s life and work: detailed bibliographical references, lists and photographs of works, press clippings, booklets, invitations, and photographs of his exhibitions. It also includes his drawings and sketches. The materials in the archive give us an understanding of Serge Sédrac’s role in international art developments of his time.

About Serge Sédrac

Serge Sédrac (Sedrakh Agababyan/Agababov, 1878–1974) was a painter and opera singer. He was born to an Armenian family in Tiflis (now Tbilisi) and studied at art school in Moscow and at the Imperial Academy of Art in St. Petersburg. He completed his art education in Paris, where he attended classes by the realist painters Fernand Cormon and Pascal Dagnan‑Bouveret at Académie Julian. In France he married Olga Makovskaya‑Agababova, daughter of the Russian artist Konstantin Makovsky, who was one of the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers).

The artist painted mainly classical landscapes, which he signed as Sédrac, and performed as an opera singer (tenor) using the surname Agababov. He was close to the Montparnasse circle and from 1928 showed his work at the Salon des Indépendants. He exhibited in London at Spring Gardens Gallery (1926) and in Paris at Galerie d’Alignan (1931) and Galerie Ecaille (1932). He also took part in concerts at the Assambleya Russian Literary Evenings (1937) in Paris. In 1975, he had a posthumous exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris.