Hovsep Pushman
Hovsep Pushman (May 9, 1877 – February 13, 1966)[2] was an American artist of Armenian background. He was known for his contemplative still lifes and sensitive portraits of women, often in exotic dress. He was most closely associated during his lifetime with the Grand Central Art Galleries, which represented him from its opening in 1922 until his death in 1966.
Hovsep Pushman was born and grew up in the town of Dikranagerd in Asia Minor,[3] where his family, originally “Pushmanian,” was in the carpet business.
In 1896 Pushman’s family emigrated to Chicago, where he studied Chinese culture, immersing himself in Asian art, and began to teach at the age of 17. He then moved to Paris and studied at the Académie Julian under Jules Joseph Lefebvre, Tony Robert-Fleury and Adolphe Déchenaud.[2] Pushman exhibited his work at the Salon des Artistes Français, where he won medals in 1914 and 1921. Pushman returned to the United States in 1914, and in 1916 moved to Riverside, California, living at the city’s Mission Inn until 1919. the same year he was awarded the California Art Club’s Ackerman Prize.[6]
After his time in California Pushman spent several years in Paris. He opened his own studio in 1921 and, with the encouragement of Robert-Fleury, concentrated his efforts on exotic portraits and still lifes of carefully arranged objects he had collected. According to James Cox, former director of the Grand Central Art Galleries, which represented Pushman for much of his life:
“[Pushman’s] paintings typically featured oriental idols, pottery and glassware, all glowing duskily as if illuminated by candlelight. They were symbolic, spiritual paintings, and were sometimes accompanied by readings, which help explain their allegorical significance. Most important, they were exquisitely beautiful, executed with technical precision.”[7]
In 1923 Pushman returned yet again to the United States and settled in New York City.
“Erwin Barrie maintained a separate velvet-walled salon for the exclusive use of Pushman. The only illumination allowed on his paintings were specially designed reflector lights attached to the rear of his carefully selected antique frames. The ‘Pushman Room’ is a legend in the American art world.”[7]
Pushman died on February 13, 1966, in New York City.[1] Three months later, Hulia Shaljian Pushman, his widow, followed him.[12]
Léon Arthur Tutundjian
Léon Arthur Tutundjian (Born 1905, Amasya, Ottoman Empire – died Paris, France December, 1968) was an Armenian painter who reached fame in France.
Leon (Levon) Tuntundjian was born in Amasya, in Sivas Vilayet in the Ottoman Empire in 1905.[1] Tutundjian came from a relatively wealth and educated family-his father and grandfather were teachers.[1] He went to good schools, learned to speak French, and dreamed of moving to Paris. Unfortunately, the family moved often so his father could procure teaching jobs. Tutundjian’s life changed dramatically when his father died from cerebral hemorrhage around 1915.[1] Without a primary provider, the family was soon destitute and Tutundjian’s mother was forced to sell the family’s possessions to care for her children. However, the family did settle down for a time and Tutundjian was able to study at the Berberian andGetronagan schools in Constantinople since his father had taught there.[1]
In 1921-22, Tutundjian’s mother placed her son on a boat with other Armenian orphans head to Greece from Constantinople.[2] He was sixteen or seventeen years of age at the time, older than most of the orphans, but the separation from his mother was still difficult for him. According to his daughter, because of the sad memories associated with this parting, Tutundjian always hated to travel, particularly on boats.[1] In 1923, he stayed briefly at the Armenian monastery of the Mekhitarist Brotherhood in the St. Lazzaro island of Venice, Italy, where he studied science and Armenian illuminated manuscripts.[1]
As an Artist
In 1924, at the age of nineteen, Tuntundjian arrived in Paris and studied art at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He married a French woman in 1933. He had some close friends who were famed artists such as Yervand Kochar.
Within two years of his arrival in Paris, he exhibitied at the opening of the Galerie Surrealiste, and three years later he was the featured artist in a group show at the Galerie des Editions Bonaparte. He created more than a thousand images of several media and styles. In 1930, he co-founded the group Art Concret with well-known abstract artists Theo van Doesburg, Jean Helion, and Otto G. Carlsund.[3][4] In 1933, he changed styles abruptly with the figural language of surrealism, which occupied him until 1960, through this long period was interrupted by the events of World War II; first by his brief military service and then by the years under Vichy rule and the war’s aftermath. In his early works, he fought the chaos of his experience by transforming it with a balanced artistic vision into ordered and pure artworks.[5] In 1960 he returned to abstraction until his death in 1968.
Yervand Kochar
Ervand Kochar (Armenian: Երվանդ Քոչար; Kocharyan) (June 15, 1899, Tiflis, Russian Empire – January 22, 1979, Yerevan, Soviet Armenia) is a prominent sculptor and artist of the twentieth century, founder of Painting in Space.
Ervand Kochar was born in Tbilisi on June 15, 1899. He graduated in 1918 from Nersisian School, and, between 1915-1918, also studied at the Arts School of the Caucasus Association for Promotion of Fine Arts (known as O. Schmerling School) in Tbilisi.
From 1918 to 1919 he studied at the State Free Art Studio of Moscow. He returned to Tbilisi, where he was granted a certificate of professor of Fine Arts and Technical Studies by the People’s Commissariat of the Georgian SSR.
In 1921 – 1922 Kochar was elected to the exhibition commission of the Union of Armenian Artists and became a member of the “HAYARTUN” (House of Armenian Art).
In April 1922 he left from Batum and traveled abroad – to Constantinople, then to Venice, Rome, Florence and Paris. Kochar’s works were first exhibited in Tbilisi in 1921 and the following year in Allied-controlled Constantinople (Istanbul) and in Venice.
By 1923 Kochar had settled down in Paris, where his art was well received and earned an enduring recognition. In 1928 there were reported cases of vandalism towards two sculpture-paintings by Kochar in the exhibition at the Salon des Indépendants. Those works were the first heralds of “Painting in Space”.
In February Dr. Alendi delivered a lecture in Sorbonne on Kochar’s “new painting”. Kochar’s Painting in Space one-man show opened in “Van Leer” Gallery. The 15 works presented were new plastic and artistic means of expression which sought to involve time as an additional fourth dimension. The author of the catalogue was French-Polish art critic Waldemar George(1893-1970). In 1929 the international exhibition, “Panorama de L`art contemporain”(“Panorama of Contemporary Art”) organized in the halls of the “BONAPART” Publishers, Kochar presented the works of “Painting in Space”. Among the participants of the exhibition were Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Robert Delaunay, Henri Matisse, Picabia, Pablo Picasso, Liursa,Joan Miró, Survage, Utrillo, Vlamink, and others. Kochar met Leonse Rosenberg, the well-known patron and connoisseur of modern art, who became a fan of Kochar’s art. In 1936, while at the peak of his artistic fame, to the surprise of many, Kochar repatriated to Soviet Armenia, without the least bit of doubt that he was leaving Paris for good. Between 1941 and 1943 Kochar was imprisoned on politically motivated charges, but was eventually freed due to the intervention of his friends from Nersissian School, Karo Halabian and Anastas Mikoyan. Yervand Kochar continued working in Yerevan, earning recognition as an Honored Artist of Armenia in 1956, People’s Artist of Armenia in 1965, State Prize recipient in 1967, Soviet Order of Red Banner in 1971 and People’s Artist of the Soviet Union in 1976. His most recognized works include the statues of David of Sassoun (1959) which has become the symbol of Yerevan, the capital of Armenia; of Vardan Mamikonian (1975); of Komitas (1969) in Echmiadzin. One of his masterpieces in painting is “Disasters of War”. In 1963 The National Museum of Modern Art Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris acquired one of Kochar’s works of “Painting in the Space” (1934). He died in 1979 in Yerevan. A museum dedicated to his art opened near Yerevan’s Cascade in 1984. In 1999 UNESCO marked Kochar’s centennial as one of the “outstanding dates” in world art. In 2010 Armenia’s Union of Artists opened an exhibit dedicated to Yervand Kochar’s artistic legacy marking 110 years since the artist’s birth.
He was married to philologist Manik Mkrtchyan (1913–1984), with whom he had two sons, Haykaz Kochar (1946) and Ruben Kochar (1953).
Jean Carzou
Jean Carzou (1 January 1907 – 12 August 2000) was a French–Armenian artist, painter, and illustrator, whose work illustrated the novels ofErnest Hemingway and Albert Camus.[1][2]
Life and career[edit]
Carzou was born Karnik Zouloumian (Armenian: Գառնիկ Զուլումեան) in Aleppo, Syria to an Armenian family. Carzou later created his name from the first syllables of his name and surname, and added a Parisian nickname, “Jean”. He was educated in Cairo, Egypt before moving to Paris in 1924 to study architecture.[1]
He started working as a theater decorator but quickly realized he preferred drawing and painting. In 1938, more than a hundred exhibitions of his works were organized in Paris, in the French provinces and abroad. In 1949, he received the coveted Hallmark prize.[citation needed]
In 1952, he created costumes and sceneries for Les Indes Galantes of Rameau at the Opéra de Paris. He continued with Le Loup (1953) for “Les Ballets” of Roland Petit, Giselle (1954) and Athalie (1955) at the Opéra and “La Comédie française”.
Carzou was elected a member of the Institut de France, Académie des beaux-arts, succeeding in the seat left vacant by the death of painterJean Bouchaud in 1977. He was also awarded the National Order of Merit of France.[2]
A Carzou museum exists in the town of Dinard (Brittany).[citation needed]
Jean Jansem
Hovhannes “Jean” Semerdjian (9 March 1920 – 27 August 2013), also known as Jean Jansem, was a French-Armenian painter.[1] Jansem’s artworks are internationally known, and are part of museum collections throughout France, Japan and the United States.
He was awarded by the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1953 and by the Knight of the French Legion of Honour in 2003.[2] The President ofArmenia awarded Jansem a Medal of Honor for his “reinforcement of Armenian-French cultural ties.”
Jean Jansem was born in 1920 in Seuleuze (Asia Minor). He spent his childhood in Salonika, Greece, and arrives in France at the age of 11 where he starts painting.
He takes evening courses in the Montparnasse quarter in Paris. Graduates the school of Arts Dératifs in 1938.
He often visits the atelier of “La Grande Chaumière” and exhibits his first oil painting at the “Salon des Indépendants” in 1939.
During numerous trips to Greece, Spain, Italy and the French province, he prepares the important themes of his exhibitions such as : the fishermen and the children of Greece, the children and the houses of Spain, the bullfighting, in Italy the landscapes, the processions, the italian markets, Venice the Laguna, the mascarade parades, the carnavals and in France the village marketplaces and the landscapes.
Since 1951 : Jansem has held exhibitions of his work in France (Paris, Amiens, Nantes, Avignon, Marseille, Nancy, Toulouse, Cannes, Mulhouse, Bayonville, Clermont-Ferrand…) and in other countries (Rome, Palermo, Lausanne, New-York, Chicago, Palm-Beach, London, Brussels, Montréal, Tokyo, Osaka, Beirut, Sao Paolo, Johannesburg, Germany, Art Expo New York and Los Angeles.
Ivan Aivazovsky
Ivan Konstantinovich Aivazovsky (Russian: Ива́н Константи́нович Айвазо́вский, Armenian: Հովհաննես Այվազովսկի Hovhannes Ayvazovski;[b] 29 July 1817 – 2 May 1900) was an Russian Empire Romantic painter. He is considered one of the greatest marine artists in history.[11] Baptized as Hovhannes Aivazian, Aivazovsky was born into an Armenian family in the Black Sea port of Feodosia and was mostly based in his native Crimea.
Following his education at the Imperial Academy of Arts, Aivazovsky traveled to Europe and lived briefly in Italy in the early 1840s. He then returned to Russia and was appointed the main painter of the Russian Navy. Aivazovsky had close ties with the military and political elite of the Russian Empire and often attended military maneuvers. He was sponsored by the imperial family and was well-regarded during his lifetime. Thewinged word “worthy of Aivazovsky’s brush”, popularized by Anton Chekhov, was used in Russia for “describing something ineffably lovely.”[12]
One of the most prominent Russian artists of his time, Aivazovsky was also popular outside Russia. He held numerous solo exhibitions in Europe and the United States. During his almost sixty-year career, he created around 6,000 paintings,[13][14] making him one of the most prolific artists of his time.[15][4] The vast majority of his works are seascapes, but he often depicted battle scenes, Armenian themes, and portraiture. Most of Aivazovsky’s works are kept in Russian, Ukrainian and Armenian museums as well as private collections.
First visit to Europe[edit]
Portrait of Aivazovsky byAlexey Tyranov, 1841
In 1840, Aivazovsky was sent by the Imperial Academy of Arts to study in Europe.[28][27] He first traveled to Venice via Berlin and Vienna and visited San Lazzaro degli Armeni, where an important Armenian Catholic congregation was located and his brother Gabriel lived at the time. Aivazovsky studied Armenian manuscripts and became familiar with Armenian art.[30] He met Russian novelist Nikolai Gogol in Venice. He then headed to Florence, Amalfi andSorrento. In Florence, he met painter Alexander Ivanov.[27] He remained in Naples and Rome between 1840 and 1842. Aivazovsky was heavily influenced by Italian art and their museums became the “second academy” for him.[30] “The echo of the success of his Italian exhibitions was even heard in Russia.”[15] Pope Gregory XVI awarded him with a golden medal.[13] He then visited Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain, where he met English painter J. M. W. Turner who, “was so struck by Aivazovsky’s picture The Bay of Naples on a Moonlit Night that he dedicated a rhymed eulogy in Italian to Aivazovsky.”[29][27] In an international exhibition at the Louvre, he was the only representative from Russia.[30] In France, he received a gold medal from the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture. He then returned to Naples via Marseille and again visited Great Britain, Portugal, Spain and Malta in 1843. Aivazovsky was “admired throughout Europe”.[29] He returned to Russia via Paris and Amsterdam in 1844.[29]
Rise to prominence[edit]
The vast majority of his works depict the sea.
In 1851, traveling with the Russian emperor Nicholas I, Aivazovsky sailed to Sevastopol to participate in military maneuvers. His archaeological excavations near Feodosia lead to his election as a full member of the Russian Geographical Society in 1853. In that year, the Crimean War erupted between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and he was evacuated to Kharkiv. While safe, he returned to the besieged fortress of Sevastopol to paint battle scenes.[13] His work was exhibited in Sevastopol while it was under Ottoman siege.[13]
Between 1856 and 1857, Aivazovsky worked in Paris and became the first Russian (and the first non-French) artist to receive the Legion of Honour.[13] In 1857, Aivazovsky visited Constantinople and was awarded the Order of the Medjidie. In the same year he was elected an honorary member of the Moscow Art Society. He was awarded the Greek Order of the Redeemer in 1859 and the Russian Order of St. Vladimir in 1865.
Aivazovsky opened an art studio in Feodosia in 1865 and was awarded a salary by the Imperial Academy of Arts the same year.[27]
A photograph of Aivazovsky, 1870
death[edit]
Aivazovsky was deeply affected by the Hamidian massacres that took place in the Armenian-inhabited areas of the Ottoman Empire between 1894 and 1896. He painted a number of works on the subject such as The Expulsion of the Turkish Ship, and The Armenian Massacres at Trebizond. He threw the medals given to him by the Ottoman Sultan into the sea and told the Turkish consul in Feodosia: “Tell your bloodthirsty master that I’ve thrown away all the medals given to me, here are their ribbons, send it to him and if he wants, he can throw them into the seas painted by me.”[35] He created several painting on the events, such as The Massacre of Armenians in Trebizond (1895), Lonely Ship, Night. Tragedy in the Sea of Marmara (1897).[36][37]
He spent his final years in Feodosia where, “He supplied the town with water from his own estate, opened an art school, began the first archaeological excavations in the region and built a historical museum. Due to his efforts a commercial port was established at Feodosia and linked to the railway network”.[38]
Aivazovsky died on 19 April (2 May in New Style) 1900 in Feodosia.[13] “In accordance with his wishes”, he was buried at the courtyard of St. Sargis Armenian Church.[39] A white marble sarcophagus was made by Italian sculptor L. Biogiolli in 1901.[40] A quote from Movses Khorenatsi’s History of Armenia in Classical Armenian is engraved on his tombstone: Մահկանացու ծնեալ անմահ զիւրն յիշատակ եթող (Mahkanatsu tsneal anmah ziurn yishatak yetogh),[41] which translates: “He was born a mortal, left an immortal legacy”[39] or “Born as a mortal, left the immortal memory of himself”.[42]
Style[edit]
Byron in Venice
A primarily Romantic painter, Aivazovsky used some Realistic elements.[50] Aivazovsky “remained faithful to this movement [Romanticism] all his life, even though he oriented his work toward the Realist genre.”[15] His early works are influenced by his Academy of Arts teachers Maxim Vorobiev andSylvester Shchedrin.[24] Classic painters like Salvator Rosa, Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael and Claude Lorrain contributed to Aivazovsky’s individual process and style.[16] Karl Bryullov, best known for his The Last Day of Pompeii, “played an important part in stimulating Aivazovsky’s own creative development”.[28][24] Ayvazovsky’s best paintings in the 1840s–1850s used a variety of colors and were both epic and romantic in theme.[16] “Towards the 1850s the romantic features in Aivazovsky’’s work became increasingly pronounced.”[46] “His Ninth Wave, usually considered his masterpiece, seems to mark the transition between fantastic color of his earlier works, and the more truthful vision of the later years.”[51] By the 1870s, his paintings were dominated by delicate colors; and in the last two decades of his life, Aivazovsky created a series of silver-toned seascapes.[16]
Ivan Aivazovsky is one of the few Russian artists to achieve wide recognition during his lifetime.[24][15][56] Today, he is considered as one of the most prominent marine artists of the 19th century,[39][57][58] and, overall, one of the greatest marine artists in Russia and the world.[11][33][59][60][61][62] He was also one of the few Russian artists to become famous outside Russia.[63][64][65] In 1898, Munsey’s Magazinewrote that Aivazovsky is “better known to the world at large than any other artist of his nationality, with the exception of the sensationalVerestchagin”.[66] Aivazovsky is also considered “the most influential seascape painter in Russian nineteenth-century art”.[67] “He was the first and for a long time the only representative of seascape painting as one of the subspecies of the landscape genre. All other artists who painted seascapes were either his own students or influenced by him.”[49]
Aivazovsky’s house in Feodosia, where he had founded an art museum in 1880, is open to this day as the Aivazovsky National Art Gallery.
Gevorg Bashinjaghian
Gevorg Bashinjaghian (Armenian: Գևորգ Բաշինջաղյան) September 16 [O.S. September 28] 1857 – October 4, 1925) was an Armenianpainter who had significant influence on Armenian landscape painting.[1]
Bashinjaghian was born on September 16, 1857 in a small town of Sighnaghi in Eastern Georgian province of Kakheti, part of the Russian Empire at the time. His father, Zakar, died in 1872 during a trip to Persia, when he was 15. After finishing the local school, he was admitted to the Arts School. In 1878, Bashinjaghian moved to the Russian capital St. Petersburg, where he became a student at the Imperial Academy of Arts a year later. Mikhail Clodt was one of his teachers. He graduated from the Academy in 1883, also winning a silver medal for his Birch Grove.[2][3]
He returned to his hometown Sighnaghi the same year and soon started to travel throughout the Caucasus: Lake Sevan, Yerevan, Ashtarak and the holy capital of the Armenian Church – Ejmiatsin, Georgia and the Northern Caucasus, which caused the artist to make a row of canvas of the local landscapes. During the next year, Bashinjaghian visited Italy and Switzerland, where he learnt about the classic European art and also saw the Alps. He later wrote that “the Alps are beautiful, but they cannot win your heart if you have seen the Caucasus.”[2]
He returned to Russia and settled in Tiflis, the largest city of the Caucasus and the cultural center of Armenians of Russia. In 1890s Bashinjaghian had exhibitions in Moscow, Odessa, St. Petersburg and Novocherkassk. In 1897, he created a series of oil painting of Ani, the medievial Armenian capital of thousand churches. From 1899 to 1901, Bashinjaghian lived in Paris with his wife Ashkhen Katanian and their three children. In France, he made a trip throughout the country and produced over 30 paintings.[2] In 1923 Bashinjaghian became a member of the Armenian Artists’ Society.[3]
Bashinjaghian died on October 4, 1925 in Tiflis and was buried at the side of Sayat-Nova’s tomb in the backyard of Saint George Cathedral.[2][3]
Exhibitions of Bashinjaghian’s works were held in Yerevan, Moscow St. Petersburg and Riga, many of them in 1957-1958, in memory of the 100th anniversary of his birth.[3] A street in Yerevan is named after him.[4]
Yeghishe Tadevosyan
Yeghishe Martirosi Tadevosyan (September 24, 1870, Etchmiadzin — January 22 1936, Tbilisi) was an Armenian painer. He was awarded by theRenowned Master of Arts title by the Armenian SSR associated with the Peredvizhniki and Mir Iskusstva movements. He studied at Lazarian School, then entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. Vasily Polenov was Tadevosyan’s teacher and friend. He participated in the drawing at Polenov’s house.
In 1898 he was awarded two prizes. His famous paintings are “Self-portrait”, “Mount Ararat from Etchmiadzin”, “The Genius and the Crowd”, “Komitas” and others.
He was the founder and head of the Union of Armenian Artists.
Yeghishe Tadevosyan is buried at Komitas Pantheon which is located in the city center of Yerevan.1
