Yehouda Leon Chaki Sold at Auction Prices

Painter, Sculptor

Yehouda Leon Chaki is a Greek-born Canadian artist based in Montreal, Quebec. Best known for his colourful palette and expressionistic landscapes, he began exhibiting in 1959 and today his work can be found in over 50 public and corporate collections and museums around the world such as Concordia University, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.,[1] Musée d'Art Contemporain de Montréal,[2] Jerusalem City Hall, and the Museo de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro.

Yehouda Chaki was born in Athens, Greece on December 11, 1938. He is the son of Sephardic Jewish parents and his early childhood was marked by the Holocaust. Chaki and his parents spent five years secretly living in the home of a Christian family in Athens before they could safely relocate to Israel with his younger brother.

This event inspired many of his works including his 1968 painting which was hung at Concordia University[4] titled "Express Train from Salonika to Auschwitz"[5] depicting the transport of Jews to the concentration camps during the Holocaust [6] and the 1999 Mi Makir installation[7] described in the book "Mi Makir: A Search for the Missing". This exhibit featured a wall filled with dark unframed portraits of Holocaust victims each bearing a number in the top left corner, and a large pile of books on the floor.

Chaki lived in Holon, near Tel Aviv, from 1945 to 1960. Throughout his adolescence, he studied painting, drawing and printmaking under Joseph Schwartzman and in his teens entered the Avni Institute of Art to study with Avigdor Stematsky, Moshe Mokady and Yehezchel Streichman. Following compulsory army service, he moved to Paris to complete his education at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts while working for artist Yaacov Agam.

In Paris, Chaki met Montrealer Grace Aronoff who was a student at the Sorbonne. The couple married in Montreal, Canada in 1963. They have two children, Lisa, married to Alan Post and Adam Chaki, married to Lisa Noto.