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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:

Sarkis Khachaturian

Title:

Armenian Orphans in the Desert, 1920

Location:

National Gallery of Armenian, Yerevan

Artist: Sarkis Khachaturian
Title: Armenian Orphans in the Desert, 1920
Location: National Gallery of Armenian, Yerevan

Faith and language have been an inseparable parts of the Armenian nation. On the exile road, often at the expense of their own lives, the Armenian nation was trying to preserve their handmade records as a central pillar of the nation's survival. This canvas of Sargis Khachatryan is filled with optimistic symbols, that even the hungry and exhausted Armenian children on the exile road Der-Zor deserts still continued to learn the alphabet by writing it on sand.

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."

Artist:

Vardges Sureniants

Title:

Desecrated Shrine, 1895

Location:

National Gallery of Armenian, Yerevan

Artist: Vardges Sureniants
Title: Desecrated Shrine, 1895
Location: National Gallery of Armenian, Yerevan

Vardges Sureniants was deeply concerned with the cruel destiny of the Armenian nation. He depicted the cruel atrocities by the Turks, that had been taking place long before the Armenian Genocide in 1915, looks like Sureniants documented the bitter fragments of the Armenian history in the "Homeless", "The Abandoned", "Massacre of Virgin", "The Monastery of ST Hripsime" and other canvases such as the "Desecrated Shrine" painting.

Slaughter and pillage, destruction of parchment manuscripts, massacre of the virgins and Armenian priests inside the church. But despite these scenes, Sureniants symbolizes hope and faith through the rising cross stones as symbols of strong faith and salvation of the Armenian nation.

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

Sahak Poghosyan: "The project Silence of my grandmother's eyes has been a silent monologue for nearly 50 years... my paternal grandmother was the first person, who connected me with the surrounding world... in my memory I still carry the odor of my childhood, which I scented sleeping in my grandmother's embrace... it was a story with hazy colors, which I was always keen to depict…And now , presenting it, the silent sorrow of her blue eyes recovers in my memory, yelling out the hellish path of the Genocide… Surviving a real hell she never told about it ... she did not tell, but with the right of a survival she transmitted it to the ones who live ... carrying as a relic a patch of the blue sky of her lost homeland in her eyes ..."

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shared arts

Artist:

Adriana Angolian