Искусство Армении. Черты историко-художественного развития

Before we go on to discuss Soviet Armenian art a few words must be said of the enormous disaster which befell Armenians during World War I. In April 1915 in Turkey there was a massacre of the Armenian population, unprecedented in modern history. Over two million Armenians were murdered. Survivors, with grief and hor ‐ ror, pushed out of Turkey, crowded across the Russian border seeking shelter on the road to Echmiadzin, seeking a sanctuary. The memory of these events have never faded from Armenian minds — virtually every Armenian family kept its own record of the disaster. Martiros Saryan and Vardkes Surenyantz left Petrograd for Tiflis, and then Echmiadzin. What they saw and heard there shook them so that even art itself seemed to have almost lost all meaning. The shock young Saryan suffered affected his whole outlook. This happened to many Armenian artists, and it is useless to try to understand Armenian art without understand ‐ ing the tragedy of a nation that has survived genocide. In November 1920, when the Soviet power was established in Armenia, the history of the country took a new turn. Hundreds of Ar ‐ menians of the diaspora, among them writers, poets, artists, returned to their own country. Many new educational and cultural institutions were founded — among them the State Univer ‐ sity, an art gallery, theatres, art schools, and concert halls. Art and culture became accessible to common people who could not even have dreamt of it before. Soon after the Revolution when the new Armenian fine arts were making their first steps, many outstanding Armenian artists came to Yerevan and made it their permanent home. Among them were the painters Saryan, Aghadjanyan, Terlemezyan, and G. Gurdjan: the sculp ‐ tors A. Sarksyan, S. Stepanyan, A. Urartu, and the graphic artists H. Kodjoyan. They had studied in Moscow, St. Petersburg or abroad, and they strove to convey the essence and meaning of the new life, the changes in their people’s lives. Urged in their work by the life around them they were also inspired by the age ‐ long traditions of Armenian culture which formed the basis of their art. However, the Armenian artists faced the same tasks as artists all over the Soviet republic. Armenian culture, therefore, cannot be fully understood unless it is studied in close connection with all Soviet art. Creative methods and principles, even chronological periods — each with its own set of artistic tasks and problem — were determined by the history of the whole country, by the values of the people who aspired to socialism. The Fine Arts Society in Yerevan was founded in 1923. Soon it held its first exhibition which brought to light a whole panorama of art in Armenia. The work of Armenian painters in Tbilisi was also represented. In 1927 a group of artists detached itself from the society and formed the Armenian branch of the Association of Revolutionary Artists whose aim was to create a new art which would be entirely based on real ‐ ity, which would reflect the new life, the changes in the world outlook of people engaged in building a new society. These first years of Soviet Armenia saw the development in all genres: painting, sculpture and ceramics, architectural relief, book illustration, print ‐ making, caricaturing, pottery, carpet ‐ weaving, jewellery, and, finally, stage design. The direction taken by Armenian painters was strongly influenced by Saryan’s work which changed considerably after the Revolution. Saryan now concentrated on expressing the uniqueness of every face, of every landscape. And while his colouring changed little, his paint ‐ ings gained a precision in which every detail was telling. As the result, Armenians associated Saryan’s paintings with Armenia herself: his landscapes and characters, his flowers and fruit be ‐ came symbols of the country. Later many of Saryan’s qualities — his optimism, joyfulness, his way of combining detail with the general — set the trend in Armenian painting. The unique charm of his works, above all, was in their consonance with the popular idea of beauty, with the traditions of folk art.