The Life, Works and Death of Sculptor Benik Petrosian
When he died in early May, just a few years shy of age 60,
Benik Petrosian was already known as a sculptor who was
consistently unpredictable, bold and refined.
THE BIOGRAPHY OF B. PETROSIAN
His first work - a clay snake made before he began to
attend school - made it clear he would choose sculpting as his
creative medium. And he did. From his first show in Holland in
1957, where he displayed works of wood, to his last years, when
his home had become a studio-workshop-museum, and the open
spaces of Ijevan, had become a kind of school and gallery,
Petrosian's work was never one-dimensional.
He was one of Armenia's few sculptors able to use different
styles and functions of sculpting to express his creativity.
There is a formal simplicity to his multi-faceted sculpture. For
him, sculpting was both a public and private display, a communal
and an intimate experience, at the same time.
A prime example of his public and communal sculptures are
the works done in stone at the Annual Symposium in Ijevan,
northeast of Yerevan, where for several summers young sculptors
from throughout Armenia and elsewhere would congregate to live
and create in the same environment. Petrosian was not only one
of the driving forces and inspirational elements behind the
symposium, he was also one of its most productive participants.
Petrosian's public works also manifest his love of nature,
regardless of the size or medium of the work. In his early works
in basalt, granite or tufa, and his later pieces in metal,
Petrosian's figures were the foxes, snakes and lions of
Armenia's forests.
The sculptor had never seen the forests of his parents'
Gogth region, but he loved to hunt and he knew the forests and
mountains of Armenia well.
Since the 1980s, he was at his most prolific, concentrating
largely on miniature sculptures, which were the works that
presented the intimate and private side of his creative output.
The forms were such that they could be displayed in private
dwellings or even buried by ancient civilizations as the most
cherished mementos of one's life. In all cases, there was a
duality to Petrosian's work - the public and private, the stone
and metal. And yet, in both style and function there is a
compactness and self-sufficiency in his sculpture. He was able
to turn them into timeless symbols, reduced to their most basic
shape and essence.
He was among the few lucky artists whose work was
appreciated and commended. For six years running, from 1985 to
1991, he received the USSR's "Best Sculpture" award for the work
he loved most - miniature sculptures in metal, marble, basalt
and his favorites, tufa and onyx.
Petrosian's work was exhibited throughout the former Soviet
Union, as well as Belgrade, New York, Los Angeles, Boston,
Paris, Canada, Japan, Italy and Switzerland. Now, more than 500
of his works in Yerevan will serve as the basis for what he had
hoped would become a school of miniature sculpture. Even before
his death, during the many months of illness, Petrosian had
begun to plan. Now, his wife and greatest fan, Alice Adamian,
will pursue his dream. A Petrosian Fund has been established to
make possible a museum and workshop as Petrosian's legacy.
Artashes Hovannisian, a great sculptor in his own right,
whose statues of Alexander Tamanian and Armen Tigranian grace
Yerevan's public spaces, commented that "Monumentalism is, first
of all, idea and form, not just the size of the sculpture. Beno
can do the things I do but I cannot do the things he does."BY GOHAR SAHAKIAN
38 (AIM MAY) JUNE 1996