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| "Toros Roslin's birth," fresco by Minas Avetisian |
Minas Avetisian was one of the most important figures of Armenian painting in the second half of the twentieth century.
Minas (he is frequently named by his
first name alone) was born on July 20, 1928, in the village of Jajur, near
Leninakan (nowadays Gumri), in the family of a blacksmith. During the World War
II years, he met by chance a local painter, Hakob Ananikian (1919-1977). This encounter became fateful for
the future artist. In 1947 he entered the Panos Terlemezian Art School
in Yerevan. Upon graduation, in 1952 he went to the Institute of Art and
Theater, but a year later he moved to Leningrad (nowadays St. Petersburg), where he studied for the next seven
years at the Ilya Rebin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture (the
former Art Academy of St. Petersburg). In 1960 he returned to Yerevan.
He entered the art world in his early
thirties, relatively late, but his brief and intense career would turn him into
a symbol of Armenian modernist art. He would come to produce some five hundred
small and big paintings during the next fifteen years, characterized by their
strong chromatic contrasts, with lyrical and sometimes tragic expression. His
childhood impressions from life in the village became one of the most powerful
creative sources for him. His production included landscapes, portraits, still
lifes, and frescoes. He was also the illustrator for several ballets and
theatrical works, such as Aram Khachatourian’s “Gayaneh” ballet and Alexander
Spendiarian’s “Almast” opera, and the movie “This green, red world,”
directed by Yuri Yerzinkian and Ernest Martirosian (1975). His art was especially influenced by Armenian
miniature painting and the art of the Italian Renaissance.
His first individual exhibition, in
1960, was met with skepticism. The painter had already shown an unusual
artistic thinking. His true value emerged in the “Exhibition of Five” in 1962,
along painters Lavinia Bazhbeuk-Melikian, Alexander Grigoryan, Arpenik
Ghapantsian, and Henrik Siravian. He was admitted to the Union of Painters of
the USSR in the same year.
In 1964 Minas married fellow painter
Gayane Mamajanian. They had two children, Arman (1966) and Narek (1969), also a
painter. Four years later, he was honored with the title of Emeritus Painter of
the Armenian SSR. Also in 1968 he appeared in Mikayel Vardanov’s film The Color of the Armenian Land.
Between 1970 and 1974, Minas produced 20 frescoes in Yerevan,
Gumri, and the surrounding villages of Azatan and Vahramaberd. Some of them
were seriously damaged after the earthquake of December 7, 1988. The buildings
that harbored them were destroyed or left in precarious situation. However, the
collaboration of experts from Bulgaria and Italy over the past three decades
helped restore some of the frescoes and save them. Some of them were moved to
Gumri and Yerevan. The acclaimed fresco “Toros Roslin’s Birth” was moved from
Gumri to Minas’ museum in his hometown Jajur. Two other frescoes were restored
and moved from Gumri to the Government House in Yerevan.
A catastrophic fire in the painter’s atelier, on the night of
January 1-2, 1972, caused the loss of all the works collected there, including
those to be showcased at an individual exhibition in Paris (some 300 works,
including 120 paintings), and his personal archive (letters, etcetera).
On February 16, 1975, Minas Avetisian was struck by a taxi driver
in Yerevan, and passed away on February 24. The circumstances of his death have
remained unclear to the present. Both the fire of 1972 and the death of the
artist are said to have been the handiwork of the KGB, the Soviet secret
police, but this remains a conjecture. He was a popular name, and also an art
dissident, since his style was far removed from the official orthodoxy of
Socialist Realism.
Minas was posthumously awarded the State Prize of Armenia (1975)
and the Martiros Sarian Prize (1980). Two films were also dedicated to him: Minas Avetisian (Marat Varjapetian,
1975) and Minas: Requiem (Mikayel
Vardanov, 1989). Two museums dedicated to his work were posthumously opened in
Yerevan (1977) and Jajur (1982). The latter was destroyed in the earthquake of
1988 and reopened in 2005.
