NATIONAL GALLERY OF ARMENIA

The museum occupies an 8-storey white stone building dating from the Soviet era, like the other buildings on Republic Square. In the shape of an Aztec pyramid, this construction dominates the basin of the great square of Yerevan, in front of the Singing Fountains. It is the fourth largest museum in the former USSR in terms of the number and quality of the works on display. A catalogue of these works, produced by the French in 1991-1992, is still available in the museum's premises. Founded in 1921, the National Gallery of Armenia brings together some 20,000 pieces belonging to the Armenian, Russian and European artistic fields. Alongside the works of Armenian painters such as Terlemézian, Vartkès Bashindjaghian, Eghiché Tadéossian, Chichmanian and Makhokhian, or the prolific Armenian-Russian marine painter Hovannés Aïvazovski (1817-1900), as well as Armenian painters from abroad, such as the Frenchman Carzou or Edgar Chahine (1874-1947), an Armenian draughtsman who spent a large part of his life in France, visitors will be surprised to discover paintings by Donatello, Tintoretto, Rubens, Van Dyke, Fragonard, Courbet or even Kandinsky and Chagall. Armenian painting, covering a period from the 7th century to the present day, is of course the best represented. In particular, fragments of frescoes from the churches of Aroutch (south of Arakadz) and Lmbat (south of Gyumri) can be seen, the first samples of an Armenian pictorial art that was only rarely expressed on the walls of the churches. Mardiros Sarian, who also has his house museum in Yerevan, reigns supreme in the rooms devoted to Soviet-era painters, alongside Panos Terlémézian, Mariam Aslamazian and Hagop Kodjoïan. Russian painting and sculpture are represented through their main artists: Alexei Venetsianov, Dimitri Levitsky or Vasily Tropinin for the 18th century, Isaak Levitan, Orestes Kiprensky, Constantin Korovine, Mikhail Vroubel, Vasily Véréchtchaguine for the 19th century; as for the Soviet period, it shows paintings by Kontchalovsky, Arkadi Plastov, Ivan Chadr, Sergei Gerassimov and other representatives of proletarian art and socialist realism, as for the famous Armenian-Soviet sculptor Yervant Kotchar, his works can be admired in the streets and squares of Yerevan, including the most famous, the equestrian statue of Sassountsi Tavit, in the eponymous square opposite the capital's railway station.