Martiros Sarian

He belonged to the generation of masters at the turn of the XX century, but was equally our contemporary. His creative works kept pace with the times, losing not their freshness and never stopping to live. Moreover, his buoyant art seems to be looking at us from the future, at a time when mankind in experiencing the heavy strain of the present times.

After all, art is man himself, the incarnation of his spiritual world, his feelings and tendencies. Martiros Sarian is still for a great many people a fragrant memory. And most of us are indeed happy that we had known Sarian ^_ the man.

The main features of Sarian’s individuality are his love of life and patriotism. His pantheistic feelings, his inclination for nature showed to be taking shape in his early childhood. At times, when he was asked to explain the reason of his longevity, he answered with a childish spontaneity: “I have done no harm to nature”.

Just a few days prior to his death, he said: “Life resembles to an island. People come out of the sea, pass over the island and merge into the sea again”.

Sarian was destined to sea his glory. People who knew him were surprised at his attitude towards his glory. Happiness, he thought, was not limited to the satisfaction of one’s own personal tendencies. He lived in his private residence, in his museum, alloted to him by the government in his life time. He would have lived in the same way in his parental hut, or, say, under a tent in nature. He world never change this naturality by anything else. Sarian’s concept of glory was to see and depict the “miracle of life, its beauty”.

TALES AND DREAMS – 1904-1908

The works created by Sarian when still a student at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, indicate his professional maturity and the deep respect for his remarkable teachers V. Serov and K. Korovin.

The path chosen by a real artist is mostly predetermined by his memories of childhood. Sarian was born in the town of Nor-Nakhichevan, on the banks of the River Don, and had spent his childhood at the farm of his father, away from the town. The family of Sarians, as well as thousands of other Armenian refugees, had migrated from the ancient Armenian capital town of Ani to the Crimea, and from the Crimea to the banks of the River Don during the reign of Ekaterina II, and continued to live there with their traditional, simple, patriarchal way of life.

The acquaintance of the young painter with his native lend, - a painter who was still alient to the urban way of life, watching the reality simplemindedly, getting fascinated by the beauties of nature, - resutled in giving shape to Sarian’s creative “self ”, and spontaneously gave rise to the series of his own creative works in the form of the so-called “Tales and Dreams”.

Among them one can came across to a one eyed creature (“A Comet”). According to the painter’s testimony, it is he himself who appears in the pictures as a poet enjoying the boundless beauty of space. In the picture “By the Sea-side. A Sphynx”, the Egyptian sphynx is represented by a woman whose body is fused with the earth. Her image embodies the idea of Mother-Nature.

In the “Tales” of 1905-1908, painted in tempera, he had introduced something new. In the pictures “The Charms of the Sun”, “The Pomegranate-tree”, “The Panthers”, “A Hot Day. By the Well”, “By the Sea-side. A Sphynx”, the color-light atmosphere of the images takes an expressive significance thanks to the contrasting harmonies of the colour. The most dominant feature of these works is the burning light, radiating as if from the depth of the canvas, as the strongest impression borne upon the painter from his native nature. This light seemed to by something unreal and unbelievable in its own time. However, it was this very feature that predetermined the originality of Sarian as the master-painter of a country blessed by the blazing sun.

The Sarianic “Dream” is the expression of natural and sacred human feelings. And the most sacred feeling for the painter was his link with his native land, a land which existed from him and his people as a bright dream.

Sarian’s “Dream” had another source, as well. In those years he had made a close acquaintance with his great compatriots including the poets Hovhanness Tumanian, Avetik Issahakian, Vahan Terian, the architects Toros Toramanian, Alexander Tamanian, the well-known revolutionary Alexander Myasnikian, with whom he had shared the same room and in 1909 had chosen him as a model for such a significant picture as “The Agriculturist” which has not, unfortunately been preserved.

THE LIGHT THAT NEVER FAILED – 1909-1916

Lying at the basis of the “Tales” was Sarian’s artistic concept of perceiving the world as an eternal and ever changing entity, as well as of creating speculative images. This led him to take up the daring step of re-producing the reality in an utterly original way of his own.

In the first self-portrait (done in two variants) we see Sarian at the back-ground of his native mountains, staring at the spectator with a deep, penetrating look. The compositional structure of these works have been given a two-dimensional solution. The painter creates dimensional planes flooded with an inner light by means of large colour volumes with hues modulated in exact relationship with one another on one single plane. The sonorous Sarianic color has the power of emitting light, as well. The painter’s aim is not all too clear. He strives to represent the object both in its simple, generalized, almost silhouettic from and in is much simple colour which generates a spontaneious feeling of joy in the spectator.

Armenia was organically linked with the countries of the Near East by its nature and the domestic life of its people (especially so in the pre-revolutionary period) and the matter interesting Sarian as a painter, was not the chronicle of life of those countries and Armenia, from time immemorial and symbolizing the character of man clung to the soil. And he painted trees and flowers, mountains and gorges, camels and dogs, peasant girls hurrying to the water- spring with pitchers to him and close to his heart. The painter, was, in fact, searching and finding what he thought to be all of his own.

The novelty introduced in those years in his canvases was the appearance of Egyptian masks and objects of eastern culture.

The strictly simple, generalized forms of the masks were something of an echo resulting from his searches. These attributes of the ancient culture seem to be staring at as from the depth of the centuries and are perceived by us as the living symbol of what is mysterious, inexplicable, eternal.

In a remote corner of the desert, under the boundless blue of the sky, there appears the date-palm freely stretching its large branches. The dominance of the burning light of the sun is being felt everywhere, on the people, animals and huts. The alluring duet of light and colour conveys unforgettable feelings of the plentitude of life, joy or sweet nostalgia.

Sarian was capable of catching and mastering all those new and forceful trends which were characteristic to the French and Russian fine-arts, but he always followed his own inner voice he always stayed loyal to the energetic temperament of a southerner. The main source nourishing his art was his native land and the culture of his beloved people.

The canvases painted by Sarian are first of all attractive by the diversity of their colures, the early sources of which might be seen in our folk-lore, that is, in the songs devoted to nature, in poetic conceptions, in the numerous samples of domestic arts created with vivid imagination and especially in the khachkars.

It was particularly in this period that the Armenian popular epos of David of Sassoon came into theater and poetry experienced their new golden age. Toros Toramanian scientificially substantiated the originality of the Armenian architecture, and Komitas purified and offered the world the national Armenian music in all its beauty.

Sarian, as one of the representatives of this galaxy of artists, asserted the national dignity in fine-arts. He was the first Armenian painter educated in Europe, who was destined to bring to light the ways of renovating the national style of painting. It was a mission destined to a man of genius which would give him some years later the lofty honour of becoming the leader of a rejuvenated school of painting.

The culture created by the people continued to exist, but the cultural life, as such, had stopped functioning in the country itself. Besides, what was most regretful was that such an original cloture was almost unknown to the civilized world.

The fact that he was bringing his fresh and original pictures from his homeland and exhibiting them in Moscow every year, and also been regarded as the finest expression of gratitude. It was, perhaps, the close neighbourhood of Russian to the East that could explain as to why the progressive representatives of the Russian art, who had deservedly appreciated Van-Gogh, Gauguin and Matisse in their own time, were capable of doing full justice to Sarian’s art, as well. So some of his works found their way to the Tretyakov picture gallery.

THE REIUVENATED HOMSLAND – THE LIVING DREAM – 1920-1972

…Within the very depth of the soul of a people, however oppressed, persecuted and deprived of their civil rights, there still flickers the fire, which, in time of freedom, is capable of being flared up and illuminating everything…

MARTIROS SARIAN (From his article of 1906)

In the period of 1915-1920 Sarian painted little, devoting himself thoroughly to his patriotic activities. He couldn’t have done otherwise. Every real artist embodies the best features of his people, shears the destiny of his people.

In 1915, Sarian hurried to Etchmiadzin to help the Armenian refugees. In 1916, he was one of the founding members of the “Society of Armenian painters” in Tbilisi, and in the same year, too, he designed the famous book of the “Anthology of Armenian Poetry” by V. Bryusov.

Beginning with 1923, Sarian created his famous paintings, which, the following year, were exhibited with great success at the “Biennale” 14^th “Armenia”, “Pease at Noon”, “My Yard”, “Yegisheh Charents’ Portrait”, “Aragats”, “Yerevan” and many others.

Sarian’s canvases of this period lead us to the history of arts of the past. Thus, for instance, in the works of arts of the Italian Renaissance one can feel not only the vived individuality of one master or Italy in bringing them about.

In his new works the painter continued to keep up his principle of creating a powerful and warm atmosphere of light thought the juxtaposition of contrasting colours.

I the following decades Sarian’s art kept pace with the times, with the life of his country. Tmhe outstanding poet of the colour crated an enormous gallery glorifying his native land and its working people, wonderful theatrical decorations, panels and book illustrations.

Alongside with the numerous portraits and landscapes, he brought about the canvas he depicted himself as a young man staring at the remote distance. To the life, as a middle-age-man, well convinced in the rightness of what he had accomplished. In the centre, in his old age, with his look full of wisdom fixed at the onlooker straight away. The landscape opening behind the three figures, symbolizes the idea that nature served the painter throughout his life as his throne. This shining mountain-range ending with the crown of Mt. Ararat and in the middle of which Sarian had depicted his own house, symbolizes the meaning of his whole life-that is, his Homeland. The face of the old man shines in wisdom with the holy feeling of patriotism.

Sarian had always painted flowers, both in days of sorrow and in days of joy. The field flowers, heralding the awakening of nature, had always found their own place in his creative works.

Only one “bouquet” of flowers of this garden is unlike the others. On May 9, 1945, people kept coming to congratulate their Varpet on the occasion of the Great Victory. The studio of the painter was flooded with flowers. Remembering his son, still serving in the army, Sarian conceived and brought about his still-life of “Flowers” dedicating the bouquet “to the Armenian soldiers who had served in the Great Patriotic War”. As always, the driving force “one might conquer death by immortality”.

Let one have a look at his portraits: Yegisheh Charents, Alexander Tamanian, Toros Toramanian, K. Igumnov, R. Simonov, A. Akhmatova, M. Lozinsky, G. Ulanova, Stepan Malkhasian, Hrachya Ajarian… These people as depicted by Sarian, can be seen in their most peculiar features characteristic to their own nature: concentrated, deeply thoughtful. We communicate ourselves with the original power of his portraiture, and, what is more important, perceive man as an indivisible particle of nature.

And here are Sarian’s last canvases: “The Earth” the unfinished “Tale” and the scores of wonderful drawings executed some time before his death. The painter opens his soul up to the world at large – all lucid and transparent, as it was. His unflinching creative credo was thoroughly substantiated in life and ended in a most luminous finale:

Death has been defeated, the “Dream” is alive.

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