Martiros Sarian museum
This museum preserves the studio and some of the works of 20th-century painter Martiros Sarian. Some say the pick of his works adorn galleries in Moscow and Paris. Start your visit to the museum (Sarian Poghots; admission AMD600; working hours 10.30am-4.30pm Fri-Tue, 10am-3pm Wed) upstairs with his sombre early works, then watch the colours erupt as he falls in love with Persia and Egypt. His art seems to mature by fusing those colours into a vision of an Oriental Armenia, landscapes of stark mountains, green villages and plunging gorges. Sarian’s large studio remains as it was when the artist died in the 1950s.
Saryan, Martiros (1880-1972) - 1909 Self-Portrait (Saryan Museum, Yerevan, Armenia)
Artist: Martiros Saryan
Completion Date: 1909
Style: Expressionism
Genre: self-portrait
Technique: tempera
Material: cardboard
Dimensions: 68 x 53 cm
Gallery: Saryan Museum, Yerevan, Armenia
Martiros Saryan was an Armenian painter. He was born into an Armenian family in Nor Nakhijevan (now part of Rostov-on-Don, Russia). In 1895, aged 15, he completed the Nakhichevan school and from 1897 to 1904 studied at the Moscow School of Arts, including in the workshops of Valentin Serov and Konstantin Korovin. He was heavily influenced by the work of Paul Gauguin and Henri Matisse. He exhibited his works in various shows. He had works shown at the Blue Rose Exhibit in Moscow.
He first visited Armenia, then part of the Russian Empire, in 1901, visiting Lori, Shirak, Echmiadzin, Haghpat, Sanahin, Yerevan and Sevan. He composed his first landscapes depicting Armenia: "Makravank," 1902; "Aragats," 1902; "Buffalo. Sevan", 1903; "Evening in the Garden," 1903; "In the Armenian village", 1903, etc. which were highly praised in the Moscow press.
From 1910 to 1913 he traveled extensively in Turkey, Egypt and Iran. In 1915 he went to Echmiadzin to help refugees who had fled from the Armenian genocide in the Ottoman Empire. In 1916 he traveled to Tiflis (now Tbilisi) where he married Lusik Agayan. It was there that he helped organise the Society of Armenian Artists.
After the Bolshevik seizure of power in 1917 he went with his family to live in Russia. In 1921 they moved to Armenia.[4] While most of his work reflected the Armenian landscape, he also designed the coat of arms for Armenian SSR and designed the curtain for the first Armenian state theatre.
From 1926 - 1928 he lived and worked in Paris, but most works from this period were destroyed in a fire on board the boat on which he returned to the Soviet Union.
In the difficult years of the 1930s, he mainly devoted himself again to landscape painting, as well as portraits. He also was chosen as a deputy to the USSR Supreme Soviet and was awarded the Order of Lenin three times and other awards and medals. He was a member of the USSR Art Academy (1974) and Armenian Academy of Sciences (1956).
Saryan died in Yerevan on 5 May 1972. His former home in Yerevan is now a museum dedicated to his work with hundreds of items on display. He was buried in Yerevan at the Pantheon next to Komitas Vardapet.
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