LEON TUTUNDJIAN

Tutundjian was born in 1904 in Turkey. He died in France in1969. He is is regarded as one of the original surrealists of the 20th century. He was extremely advanced for his time.  His visions are metaphoric and are reconstructed on the canvases with a most revolutionary perception of unity between intellectualism, surrealism and chromatic progression.

Three paintings by Tutundjian. #1. Red Max, 1930, #2. Composition, 1930, #3. Nature More au Balcon, 1930.

SAMUEL GABRIELIAN

Samuel Gabrielian was born in 1951 in Nagorno-Karabagh. He studied art at The Terlemezian's Art College during the years 1969-1973 and graduated from the Yerevan Fine Art Institute in 1979.Since 1989 his paintings have been  exhibited in most parts of the former Soviet (USSR"), Dubai, Beirut, Abu-Dhabi, Washington, London, Lourence and Cairo. More than four hundred of Samuel Gabrielian's works are now in trust with the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Armenia and  the Armenian Artist Association in Yerevan.

Emma Budagian one of the leading art critics in Armenia wrote:  "The most important thing in his work is the soul. Finding out yourself in the hall with his paintings, you get into the powerful bio-energetic zone and can not help surprising of magic vibrations of the thinnest nuances, shades and rhythms. Colors as if 'playing' with each other, even 'flirting'...". "Suddenly light- bright and life, lights up and cleans the way leading us to hope and kindness. It drives away evil and lie, violence and death. It is interesting that the artist brights up the picture from the bottom, as if carefully 'controlling', gradually' regulating', reducing in intensifying the effect. In some works the light' comes from inside, from the very depth of the image. Mysteriousness is reigning, even with theatrical lighting. Color and contours, different variations of colorful palette. Game of lines and sudden effective 'mesanscenes', tones and halftones, working out lightning decisions... - That is Art, the poetry of the highest note (music). Here there is a merging in one the talent of the artist, fragility of his soul and simultaneously passion of his artistic temperament, innate feeling of refined taste and rhythm. That is the credo of Samuel Gabrielian, his aesthetics and outlook." (Reprinted as is)

KAREN AGHAMIAN

THE PIONEERS OF THE DIASPORA ART

ARTOUR OSHAKANTSI:

OLD ARMENIA'S NEW ARTIST

Photo: Study for the Refugees, by Oshakantsi.

Fast and furious, Artour OSHAKANTSI is probably the most powerful post - modernist painter of Independent Armenia. While his academic roots were fed by the figurative rigidities of the Socialist Realism in Soviet Armenia. Oshakantsi's generation of angry young men drew comfort and inspiration from the mild abstract expressionism of the much decorated Martiros SARIAN, who seems to have remained the only Great Master of Soviet painting officially sanctioned to be mildly abstract during the worst times of camp Stalinist monumental masonry. While in the West Abstract Art evolved from purely pictorial experimentation (although the Mother of them all, Dadaism, may have had some social content). in Soviet Armenia, Abstractionism symbolized (and manifested) the voice of explosive cork-bottled societal protest. And Artour OSHAKANTSI was one of the first to dare blow his top off, going, nay, racing headlong into a mad, sometimes bad, always wild abstraction, but rooted firmly in powerful colourful Fauvist structures. Uniquely and single-handedly in post-modern art of today, OSHAKANTSI has hit upon re-inventing here and now in Britain, the almost forgotten Fayyum Portraits of Hellenistic Egypt-highly individualistic character-revelations of modern men and women, haunting readings of their immortal souls, the icon-ic capture of God's breath in action, creating the individual in his own image. Infinitely variable yet somehow mysteriously the same, that is, divinely deeply puzzled pieces of human earth.

Photos, left: Dance of Fruits and Birds. Right: Right Eye, by Oshakantsi.

The Founder of Abstract Naturalism: Arshile Gorky (1904-1948), the Armenian exile in America, invented the American Abstract Expressionism. His young disciple in Soviet Armenia, Artour Oshakantsi, became the greatest Armenian Abstract painter in the Soviet Union. A long spell in London, and a decade of experimentation led Oshakantsi to an iconographic synthetic style, which ironically only an analytical mind thinking in figurative terms, could achieve, creating a breakthrough new school of Painting which needs labeling ; I propose ABSTRACT NATURALISM, founded on so profound a spiritual/mythical symbolism as to encode almost heraldic medieval allegories. Oshakantsi is the abstract naturalist par excellence, and its Founder.-Professor H. I. PILIKIAN .

Hrant Mirzoian

Photos from L to R: #1. Madonna, 2000. #2. Expectations, 1999.

Born in Giumri, Armenia.
Graduated from P. Terlemezian Art Institute
and Yerevan Fine Art Institute.


Exhibitions: (Data/Text provided by the artist, "as is")

·  1983 Youth exhibition in Finland

·  1985 Group exhibition in Moscow

·  1989 Personal exhibition in Yerevan Modern Art Museum

·  1991 Group exhibition in Canada and France

·  1993 Exhibition organized by "Style" Gallery in Jerusalem, Sweden, Beirut and England

·  1994 Personal exhibition in Chekhia, Prague in "Bilo Roge" Gallery  ·  1995 Group exhibition in Beirut. Since 1988 Hrant Mirzoian is a Member of Artists Union of Armenia. Nowadays, Hrant Mirzoian lives and continues his activity in Yerevan, Armenia.

   At the Beach, 1999.                                                                                                                        Musicians, 1999.  

Continues on the next page.