Mardiros Sarian

Mardiros Sarian
(1880-1972)
"Life is an island. People come out of the sea, cross the island, and return to the sea. But this short life is long and beautiful. In getting to know nature man exalts the wonder and beauty of life"

Mardiros Sarian was one of the pleiad of major cultural figures of Armenia at the turn of the century. His work, in common with the literary contributions of O.Toumanian and A.Isahakian, those of T.Tormanian and A.Tamanian in architecture, and of Komitas in national music, set the standard of national art, and laid the foundations for its flowering.
Mardiros Sarian was one of those rare artists who are acclaimed in their lifetime. People were always surprised by his attitude to the fame which followed him everywhere and crowned his works. Although his last years he lived in his own house, in his own museum, he was amazingly unassuming and modest. Those who knew Sarian over the years never ceased to marvel at his unflagging spirit and his boundless and wholehearted love of life, purity of soul, modesty and kindness. His art fully expresses the peace of Sarian's inner world, and is in harmony with the spirit of our times. Recalling his own background, Sarian said "My ancestors had come to the banks of the river Don from the Crimea, and to the Crimea from Ani, the capital of medieval Armenia .I do not know when the artist was born in me. It was probably in those days when I used to listen to my parents' stories about our mountainous, enchanted country, when I used to run as a small boy over the land around our home, and was filled with joy at the many colors of the butterflies, flowers. Color, light and day-dreaming- those are what fired me".
Sarian first traveled to Armenia in 1901 while still a student at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, and here he saw everything he had dreamt of in his childhood. The fantastic mountainous scenery made an unforgettable impression on the young artist. Sarian's creative identity and his first original works were born of the contact of the artist's interior world with nature. He called these early works (1904-1908) "Fancies and dreams".
The Sarian's characteristic warm color scale of golden hues is enlivened by contrasting blush-green tones. Light is exploited as a basic means of expression. Sarian once said "I paint things in stronger colors than I see in them. By using sonorous colors in contrasting combinations, I try to achieve sensation of sun, of life".
A new stage in Sarian's work began in 1909. The artist retained his delight in the natural world, but discovered new forms and means for its expression. "It was essential for me to overcome the clinging drabness of conventional painting, and to find my own technique instead of using others'," Sarian recalled. "I began to search for more solid and simple forms and colors with which to convey the essence of reality in painting. My aim in general has been to achieve by the simplest means, avoiding any piling up of mere effects, the greatest possible expressiveness. In particular, I meant to eradicate the easy compromise of half-tones� Aside from this, my aim has been to penetrate to the very root of realism. I mean the power of expression which is in all genuine works of art, from ancient times to our own day. Or rather, I am talking of that power of fascination which has been achieved in the art of different cultures in the greatest variety of ways."
Sarian's original contribution is in the peculiar quantity of his pictorial vision, a vision which was, in a sense, akin to that of the French Fauves, inasmuch as their new pictorial language, based on the contrast of pure, clear colors, was in some degree inspired by the special coloristic range of the tropics and the East. The East was in Sarian's blood. His homeland and his culture were the direct source of his inspiration. "In my own country I was face to face with nature, which was infinitely dear to me."
Sarian's creative method of the 1910s has certain features which show an influence of medieval Armenian miniature and monumental painting. This is evident first of all in the vivid, saturated, flat color and in the precise, generalizing, almost outline drawing. The compositional clarity and laconicism of his pictures can also be compared to the balanced proportions of national architecture, which together with the Armenian landscape itself influenced the young Sarian most of all.
Between 1910-1913, Sarian traveled in Turkey, Egypt and Persia. Sarian found much that was in harmony with his ideas in the art of ancient Egypt. The notion of the eternity and continuity of life, which lies in the bases of Egyptian art and is expressed in distinct forms, thrilled Sarian. As a memory of his visit, he brought home some masks found during excavations, and continually used them in his work. Seeing in the masks a symbol of immorality, Sarian sometimes included them in still-life paintings, and as accessories in portraits. Sarian settled permanently in Yerevan in 1921 and from this time his entire life, his thoughts, his art were bound to his native Armenia. He became one of the most active figures in the renaissance of Armenian national culture. Sarian was so deeply devoted to Armenia that even when living in Paris in 1927 he continued to paint landscapes of his homeland.
To the end of his life Sarian never lost his talent for work or the freshness of his vision. The vitality of Sarian's genuinely national art lies in its truth to the character of the artist's homeland, in the expression of complex ideas. His works are in no sense rationalistic; they are deeply emotional.
In Sarian's view, man's happiness was to be found in his harmonious union with nature. He glorified the beauty of life in his inimitable pictorial poetry. This poetry belongs to all ages, and to all mankind.

Shagen Khachatrian