MARDIROS SARIAN HOUSE-MUSEUM

It was in this small house, illuminated by a large glass roof, that the great Armenian painter of the Soviet period Mardiros Sarian (1880-1972) lived; it was here that he had his studio, and where some fifty works by this very prolific artist are preserved. In spite of the official character of his painting, which earned him fame throughout the USSR, where he enjoyed all the honors as a member of the nomenklatura, and which allowed him to pass through the censorship, Sarian remained dear to the hearts of Armenians. We are grateful to him for having been able to transcribe on canvas the essence of Armenian nature, the colour and brightness of his landscapes and the expressiveness of his faces. His house-museum remains a place of pilgrimage. We enter into the intimacy of this painter born in the south of Russia, who studied at the Fine Arts School in Moscow, then worked with the Impressionists, participated in a Symbolist group, frequented Matisse, Van Gogh or Rodin or Maillol, whose influences he was influenced by, was Fauvist, post-impressionist, but little attracted by Orientalism, before falling under the banner of Realism when it imposed itself, in the USSR, putting an end to the creativity of the revolutionary years. This "blue fawn", however, because of his hues, presented himself as an unconventional colourist, who knew how to compromise with the dictates of censorship in order to exalt, in some 5,000 canvases, the nature and people of Armenia.