About Rene

Rene Efi Hakimian was born in Tehran, Iran in 1967. He lost his parents at a young age and moved to New York with his family in 1979. At the start of Iranian Revolution, Rene finished high school in Forest Hills, NY and began college at C.W. Post, where he studied Art. He went on to study at SUNY in Albany where he graduated with a major in Geography and a minor in Sociology. 

After graduating in 1991, Rene spent some months in Israel. He returned to New York and began painting more intensely and prolifically. His early works speak to Rene’s Middle Eastern and Jewish heritage. 

In 1997, about one hundred of his paintings were destroyed and lost, although slides and photographs of these works still exist. For many years, Rene worked in the family diamond business, but remained passionate about painting and the arts. His pieces are often sold to art dealers and private collectors. 

Rene spends every free moment studying and reading about philosophy and art. He has cultivated his own philosophy of life, with strong faith in destiny and the belief that all people are gifted and equal. Rene maintains a utopian life view for the future. 

His art expresses his complex feelings and thoughts and conveys his perception of the world, deriving a strong influence from American Psychoanalysis. He refers to his drawings as social maps. According to Rene, his artwork reflects his internal dialogue. Rene works with various media and surfaces such as oils, pastels, acrylic-colored pencils, watercolors and penned graphics, on canvas and paper. He is regularly experimenting with colors with patterns and designs.

Picasso, Van Gogh, Matisse, and Chagall are among the most influential artists that stand out prominently in Rene’s mind. He recognizes Picasso as being very productive in his works. Picasso was able to convey reality from a point of view that makes you muse and promotes good feelings. Picasso wasn’t bothered by reality of life and accepted it for what it was. Matisse’s work is a mix of a surrealism and expressionism. Rene believes that the neatness of Matisse’s paintings allows one to be contemplative. Rene admires Van Gogh for the reason that his works are like volcanic eruptions of emotion on canvas. Chagall’s strongest imprint on Rene is his long and healthy life, lived through the age of ninety-eight. Rene sees a sort of mystic quality in Chagall’s pieces. Shared elements in this group influence Rene’s artistic style and motivation.

Rene views his time spent in museums as a therapeutic process, where he discovers himself and relates to his expression of art. He believes that everything in life is eternal. If life itself is not eternal, then art certainly is!