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100

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100

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mission

The Armenian Genocide has left an irreversible trace in our history and in our spirits and the reflection of grief, yearning, hope is woven in chain in the Armenian fine arts. When human languages is powerless to express what happened in 1915, the language of art does have the power to do so. Different generations of Armenian famous artists have continuously addressed the great iniquity and the artworks dedicated to the Armenian Genocide have always had their unique places in their art. Armenian artists greatly contributed to the global acknowledgement of the Armenian Genocide thought their art. Many of these works have been exhibited to public but even more of them are unknown till today.

100 years

CULTURAL GENOCIDE

Acts and measures undertaken to destroy the culture of a nation or an ethnic group is called "cultural genocide". Many facts prove that simultaneous with the massacres and deportation of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, the government of the Young Turks masterminded and implemented systematic destruction of the material testimonies of the Armenian civilization.

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

A genocide is the organized extermination of a nation aiming to put an end to their collective existence. The extermination of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and the surrounding regions during 1915-1923 is called the Armenian Genocide. Those massacres were masterminded and perpetrated by the government of Young Turks and were later finalized by the Kemalist government.

100 arts

The anguish of the Armenian Genocide, which is being reborn with every Armenian, has its own reflection in the Armenian fine arts. Many Armenian well known artists have created artworks both in Armenia and in Diaspora that are the speaking witness of the Armenian great pain, loss and yearning. These artworks are also ode to the Armenian viable genes, will power of giving birth, living and creation. Genocide is the type of crime that does have any expiration date. Human speech is sometimes powerless in expressing those things that are possible to express only through art. These 100 artworks will continuously tell the world about the unhealed wound of the Armenian, millions of innocent victims, demolished heartlands, bowed churches, lost homeland and infinite belief. The power of art is undeniable and artworks are eternal.

Artist:

Ararat Sarkissian

Title:

Earth (Image VIII), 2003

Location:

Artist's Collection

Artist: Ararat Sarkissian
Title: Earth (Image VIII), 2003
Location: Artist's Collection

In Sarkissian’s landscapes, nature, manifesting itself in the mysterious appearance of runes, elicits in the spectator an irrepressible desire to decipher the imagery. What is presented to us is not a puzzle but rather a miracle, at which we gaze in a trance-like state, losing ourselves in the experience and dissolving our ego.

Artist:

Mkrtich Sedrakyan

Title:

Year 1915, 1960

Location:

National Gallery of Armenian, Yerevan

Artist: Mkrtich Sedrakyan
Title: Year 1915, 1960
Location: National Gallery of Armenian, Yerevan

The third stage of the planned extermination of the Armenian nation by Ottoman empire is expressed in one composition in Mkrtich Sedrakian’s "Year 1915" canvas. The first stage was enrollment of the Armenian men to Ottoman army, then disarmament and slaughter by the Turkish military associates. The second stage was the extermination of the Armenian intelligentsia and the third stage was the massacre of the women, children, elderly people by deporting them to the Syrian desert.

In the 60-ies Soviet Armenia the Armenian artists were prohibited to depict on theme of the Armenian Genocide. And only, in 1965, when the Genocide monuments was built in Tsitsernakaberd the ban barrier disappeared.

Artist:

Lilit Stepanian

Title:

#1915, 2010

Location:

Private Collection

Artist: Lilit Stepanian
Title: #1915, 2010
Location: Private Collection

Lilit Stepanian: "The face of the Armenian is the reflection of his soul. This reflection, that changes time and again at the crossroads of centuries, contorts with its pain, shines with its triumph, cracks again and trembles, breaks and is born anew."

Artist:

Khoren Der-Harootian

Title:

Kerasun (Giresun), The Buttom of Yeprat, 1961

Location:

National Gallery of Armenian, Yerevan

Artist: Khoren Der-Harootian
Title: Kerasun (Giresun), The Buttom of Yeprat, 1961
Location: National Gallery of Armenian, Yerevan

The Armenians, who survived the Armenian Genocide, were scattered all over the world thus becoming the bases of creation of the huge Armenian Diaspora. The Armenian artists, Khoren Ter-Harootian among them, who survived the Genocide, living, studying, working and almost inhabiting in the diaspora never stopped keeping the connection with his motherland, raising the genetic connection of being Armenian in the arts, ignoring the fact of living far from the motherland.

Kerasun (Giresun) is an ancient harbor city in Turkey where 200 Armenian families used to inhabit before the Genocide. In 1915 the Armenians were subjected to forced displacement from their inhabitants and most of them fell victims of the Genocide. This work is one of those several works created by the artist-sculptor Ter-Harootian, where the horror of death is revealed, The soul and body of the Armenian nation having seen the tribulation.

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SHARED ARTS section.
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shared arts

Artist:

Adriana Angolian