Sazevich's own restless creativity soon began to make itself apparent. He enrolled at UC Berkeley and found a fitting home at the School of Architecture where the students gathered by day in the coffeehouses and spent wine-soaked nights together. While courting and eventually marrying a Russian woman who was part of a charismatic group of Romanovs and Russian nobility, he started his own architectural practice focused on residential and restaurant design.

 

In the 1960s, he and his wife purchased land in Inverness, CA, built a weekend home there, and fell into the embrace of West Marin's hippie community. He began to paint more and more, creating murals for restaurant interiors and covering canvases in his art studio on the ridgetop.

 

In 1978, the newly appointed director of the Sausalito Art Festival, tapped Sazevich and his wife to serve as chief architects, bringing them on to a dynamic team that would revitalize the festival. A stunning design was developed that recycled the material from Christo's 1976 Running Fence, making the festival grounds as distinctive as the artwork on view.

 

Sazevich's painting practice grew in importance as he entered the next chapter of his life, abruptly precipitated by the fire that took the Inverness house and his wife’s death in 2000. He rebuilt and made his home in West Marin, devoting himself to his art. He and his new partner, a photographer, became members of Gallery Route One in Pt. Reyes, CA, where the two exhibited regularly.

 

Sazevich’s first love was oil painting, although he was also adept with watercolors. Writing about his practice, he said: Constantly fascinating me is the play of oil paints shifting under a slashing stroke, changing shape, mixing with an adjacent color. Attacking the canvas with paint scrappers, fingers, always reaching for light in the textures of the paints, then something taps me on the shoulder, saying, “Enough! That’s it.”

Igor Sazevich

Painter

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1929-2022, born San Francisco, CA

Architecture degree, UC Berkeley

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Exhibitions:

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2022 Juried Exhibition, Gallery Route One, Pt Reyes, CA

2015-2022 Annual Member Exhibition, Gallery Route One, Pt Reyes, CA

2019 Juried Exhibition, Gallery Route One, Pt Reyes, CA

2018 Solo Exhibition, Gallery Route One, Pt Reyes, CA

2014 Solo Exhibition, Gallery Route One, Pt Reyes, CA

2014 Architecture/8 Visions, Toby’s Gallery, Pt Reyes, CA

2012 Two-person Exhibition, Blackbird Café, Inverness, CA

2011 Juried Exhibition, Gallery Route One, Pt Reyes, CA

2010 Gallery 111, Sausalito, CA

2010 Two-person Exhibition, Toby’s Gallery, Pt Reyes, CA

2009 Juried Exhibition, Gallery Route One, Pt Reyes, CA

2006 Two-person Exhibition, Toby’s Gallery, Pt Reyes, CA

2003 Solo Exhibition, Bolinas Museum

2002 National Computer Art Invitational Exhibition, Eastern

Washington Gallery of Art, Cheney, WA

2000 California Small Works, Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, Santa

Rosa, CA

1999 Juried Exhibition, Gallery Route One, Pt Reyes, CA

1999 Casa Alexandra, Calle Brazil, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico

1996-2002 Marin Art Festival, Marin Civic Center

1996 Juried Exhibition, Gallery Route One, Pt Reyes, CA

1977 Private Showing sponsored by Rian Corporation, Morgan

Building, Portland

1976 Private Showing, Casa Madrone, Sausalito

1975-78 Sausalito Art Festival, Sausalito (part of founding team)

1954 US Armed Forces International Exhibition, National Gallery,

Washington, DC

1954 US Armed Forces International Exhibition, Kuntz Museum,

Frankfurt, Germany

1950 Annual Invitation Juried Exhibition, SFMOMA

 

Commissions:

 

· Nordstrom Corporation: Oil Paintings installed in Seattle, Palo Alto, Los Angeles, Bellingham Washington

· Rian Corporation: Mixed Media & Paintings, Portland Oregon

 

Publications:

 

Author, Time in My Coffee, An Art-full Autobiography, 2018.