Modigliani (2018) Painting by Artur Saryan

Arthur Saryan 

Biography 

I’ve been painting since I was a kid, for as long as I can remember.They say I had been painting even in early childhood , the time I can’t even remember. At the age of 6 I was taken to the preparation course to the kids’ center for the aesthetic education named after Henry Egitian. On the entrance exam I painted a huge tree and people climbing on it.  I was one of those people and the tree was my dream and aim to enter that school and study art under the control of professionals.  Just a year later my painting took the first place on the art works contest of Egitian’s Center ‘s students’. My painting was called “Hunting”.  There was an English man in a cylinder on the picture and I have no idea why I painted a huge crab with a schematics of the clockwork instead of its armor. Well, there was a long stick sticking out from the cylinder and some dried fish dangling right in front of his face. It was 1991 and tough times came for Armenia. Art started to seem inappropriate in a man’s life as homeland defend became the most important thing that time. Along with the studying at Egitian’s center I stared doing boxing. Nevertheless, various paintings didn’t leave my imagination.However, those fantastic and a little surreal plots were replaced with tanks, wars and soldiers.When I was 15 years old I broke my arm and gave up boxing as the injury could put paid to doing art. I was 16 when my brother suggested our dad to bring my works to Yerevan State Art Academy.The Head Master of the Academy Arshalyus Agaian said that the competitive selection was almost closed and I couldn’t apply for that, but nonetheless, agreed to look at my works. The way I depicted the devil impressed him so much that he agreed to take me to the preparation course.When I met him eye to eye he said to me: “I’ve seen many paintings of the devil but never ever seen any like yours”.  I was working really hard trying to repeat every single detail we were shown and taught by the teachers, painting sketches and doing my best to catch every word said by the teachers in order to enter the academy that summer no matter what. I wanted to learn to paint so badly because I had amazing pictures in my mind, but whenever I wanted to depict them on the paper it wasn’t exactly what I imagined , it was way more primitive. After several years of hard work one of the teachers PharaonMirzoian called other students, who were preparing for the exams like me, to my desk and said: “Paint like Arthur and you will definitely enter!”.

• Nationality: ARMENIA
• Date of birth : 1983
• Artistic domains:
• Groups: Contemporary Armenian Artists