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100

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100

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The Armenian Genocide has left an irreversible trace in our history and in our spirits and the reflection of grief, yearning, hope is woven in chain in the Armenian fine arts. When human languages is powerless to express what happened in 1915, the language of art does have the power to do so. Different generations of Armenian famous artists have continuously addressed the great iniquity and the artworks dedicated to the Armenian Genocide have always had their unique places in their art. Armenian artists greatly contributed to the global acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide thought their art. Many of these works have been exhibited to public but even more of them are unknown till today.

100 years

CULTURAL GENOCIDE

Acts and measures undertaken to destroy the culture of a nation or an ethnic group is called "cultural genocide". Many facts prove that simultaneous with the massacres and deportation of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the government of the Young Turks masterminded and implemented systematic destruction of the material testimonies of the Armenian civilization.

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

A genocide is the organized extermination of a nation aiming to put an end to their collective existence. The extermination of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and the surrounding regions during 1915-1923 is called the Armenian Genocide. Those massacres were masterminded and perpetrated by the government of Young Turks and were later finalized by the Kemalist government.

100 arts

The anguish of the Armenian Genocide, which is being reborn with every Armenian, has its own reflection in the Armenian fine arts. Many Armenian well known artists have created artworks both in Armenia and in Diaspora that are the speaking witness of the Armenian great pain, loss and yearning. These artworks are also ode to the Armenian viable genes, will power of giving birth, living and creation. Genocide is the type of crime that does have any expiration date. Human speech is sometimes powerless in expressing those things that are possible to express only through art. These 100 artworks will continuously tell the world about the unhealed wound of the Armenian, millions of innocent victims, demolished heartlands, bowed churches, lost homeland and infinite belief. The power of art is undeniable and artworks are eternal.

Artist:

David Yukhanyan

Title:

Half Slide of Your Dream, 2015

Location:

Private Collection

Artist: David Yukhanyan
Title: Half Slide of Your Dream, 2015
Location: Private Collection

Davit Yukhanyan: "I think that the painting will describe itself better than any words."

Artist:

Sahak Poghosyan

Title:

Silecne of My Grandmother's Eyes, 2015

Location:

Artist's Collection

Artist: Sahak Poghosyan
Title: Silecne of My Grandmother's Eyes, 2015
Location: Artist's Collection

Nazaret Karoyan (Аrt critic): "Genocide therefore, was mostly a technological program and action. As such, it did not imply the sheer destruction of a group of people, the removal of all that related to their everyday life: eating (towel, table cloth, napkins), sleeping (tick, blankets, sheets), intimacy, dreams, all those open and secret subjects of everyday life that Bourdieu called habitus. The operation was not only directed to the destruction of the reproductive organs of a human collectivity, an entire race, but also the elimination of all signs, thus making impossible mourning itself and the words of mourning.

Sahak Poghosyan, by addressing genocide, deals with this situation. The point is not that there are no stories in this situation, but that it is impossible to talk, as such, about them. The painter seems to portray their weak whispers that eventually become silence by enmeshing the linear clearness and color brightness of fabrics and trimmings with a coating of paraffin."

Artist:

Mkrtich Sedrakyan

Title:

Year 1915, 1960

Location:

National Gallery of Armenian, Yerevan

Artist: Mkrtich Sedrakyan
Title: Year 1915, 1960
Location: National Gallery of Armenian, Yerevan

The third stage of the planned extermination of the Armenian nation by Ottoman empire is expressed in one composition in Mkrtich Sedrakian’s "Year 1915" canvas. The first stage was enrollment of the Armenian men to Ottoman army, then disarmament and slaughter by the Turkish military associates. The second stage was the extermination of the Armenian intelligentsia and the third stage was the massacre of the women, children, elderly people by deporting them to the Syrian desert.

In the 60-ies Soviet Armenia the Armenian artists were prohibited to depict on theme of the Armenian Genocide. And only, in 1965, when the Genocide monuments was built in Tsitsernakaberd the ban barrier disappeared.

Artist:

Haroutiun Gakentz

Title:

The Portrait of a Writer Vivan Tjitejian, 1957

Location:

National Gallery of Armenian, Yerevan

Artist: Haroutiun Gakentz
Title: The Portrait of a Writer Vivan Tjitejian, 1957
Location: National Gallery of Armenian, Yerevan

Armen Yesayants (PhD in Art History): "The anguish of the entire nation is centered in the art of Haurtyun Kalentz. In the artistic heritage of Kalents the theme of Genocide was depicted both directly and indirectly: Kalentz said: There in the foreign country, Armenian faces seem to be a part of the motherland. For me the portrait is also landscape and much more than that. The portraits are my motherland."

share your arts

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SHARED ARTS section.
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shared arts

Artist:

Adriana Angolian