There are no such things as great or small
Themes; There is only the artist, the creator,
who seeks, by means chosen to suit his temperament
and his outlook, to disclose his inner world of
feelings and experiences he has lived through.
"If you ever come to our part of the world, have a look round the picture gallery and the studios of our artists. Drop in, for example, on Minas Avedisian. His canvases are a bright, impressive hymn to the sun; they will tell you how beautiful our southern land can look to the eyes of the attentive traveler".
Minas Avedisian was born on the 20th of July, 1928, in a little Armenian village-Djadjur. Leningrad, with its Academy of Fine Arts and its Hermitage played a significant role in Avedisian's becoming an artist. Avedisian used to remember with gratitude his teachers, Johannson, Zaitsev and Khudiakov: they never hindered the natural expression of his own artistic individuality.
Both in his student years and after graduating from the Academy, Avetisian traveled widely around Armenia, eagerly seeking out historical monuments; he studied the Armenian miniature and the works of the greatest Armenian artists, above all, Sarian's.
Avedisian's real emergence as an artist was at the "Exhibition of Five" in Yerevan (the capital of Armenia) in 1962, where he revealed himself as a mature painter with a bright individuality. Numerous specialists and visitors to the exhibition thought highly of his work. In the presence of a large group of visitors and representatives of press, the French artist Jean Lurcat exclaimed: "This artist rivals France's best painters".
Avetisian follows the national traditions in painting, yet he never resorts to slavish imitation or stylization. But he shows great freedom and originality in his use of means of expression found in the work of ancient miniaturists: bright sonorous colors, coordination of pictorial tension throughout the entire surface of the canvas, rhythmic arrangement of lines, the static quality of representation, and the absence perspective. This is quite natural: like any artist of great talent, Avedisian has achieved an understanding of reality not so much through the study of the works of other masters, as through his own perception and interpretation of life.
One has but to visit Djadjur once to realize how much Avetisian is bound to the natural surroundings in which he was born and how these natural surroundings, much more than any other sources, have contributed to his making as an artist. A childhood spent in the village, the tales of the old men-all these were not only a school of life, but also a school of art, shaping the artistic outlook of the youth. It was precisely this sort of schooling that led to the creation of works imbued with an authenticy which is not just a mere copy or imitation of reality, but the very essence of the art of all peoples and ages. Avedisian himself declared: "The artist who blindly copies nature is like a priest who mechanically mumbles the words of a prayer without penetrating into their essence. But nature is not a book and not a dogma, each person can open her treasures only with his own key. Only an artist of passive perception reproduces blindly what he sees in his visual environment".
The color scheme in Avedisian's canvases acquires full independence. This independence is evident only in respect of nature,
for Avetisian does not mechanically transfer onto the canvas the color of the objects he paints. He distributes his colors so as to form harmonious combinations. Such a free use of color in no way conflicts with the artist's imaginative treatment of the reality; on the contrary, it serves it.
The portrait gallery created by Avedisian is varied. The ability to generalize is the feature which characterizes his best portraits.
After the profound shock inflicted on Avedisian by the burning down of his studio, which for a time brought his creative activity to a halt, the artist actively engaged in work and produced a series of significant canvases. Avedisian's paintings have been exhibited in the Germany, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Turkey, the USA, Canada, France and Austria. Numerous comments in the press, monographs and essays on the artist bear witness to the great interest aroused by his art.
Avedisian belongs to those Armenian artists who prove that one can be useful to one's
people, expressing its hopes, in all sorts of ways, but with one absolute condition - in a language worthy of art.
