HMAYAK AVETISYAN
Hmayak Avetisyan
1912-1978
Painting, Graphic, Arts
Yerevan., 2012 – 224 p.,
246 color reproductions.
“If the Foundations be Destroyed…” (pp. 27-31)
Adherence to tradition did not prevent H.Avetisyan’s creative “self-determination.” That is why, even by a cursory look at his painting, one senses the peculiarity of Avetisyan’s perception of the world and the distinctiveness of his artistic language. Everything agitated him: present, past and future, the outer world and an individual’s inner world, nature with its infinite richness of states. Such a wide embrace of reality led him to different genres: historical painting, portrait, landscape. Each of them appears, so to speak, in its pure form, but if we grasp Avetisyan’s work, then this division becomes at once conditional. Although different in genre and subject line, the works are closely bound up with a single theme, a coherent assertion of a single value, so that a landscape or a portrait is no less “historical” than his subject matter compositions. In retrospect it is easy to see, but to achieve this, the artist had to
travel a long road, nurturing and understanding what was in his heart.
The historical subject-matter, of course, raises some difficulties, but the national in art, unlike the language, never requires “translation,” especially when it tells about some¬thing that is congenial and clear to everyone – about love. Yes, the main force that prompted the artist to creation, the ultimate sense for the sake of which he created his works, is love: toward life, freedom, justice and, above all, love toward man. As the artist said, “The result of true art is always moral.” Adhering to these principles all his life, Hmayak Avetisyan left an inheritance of universal importance.
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