National Gallery of Armenia

Vardges Sureniants (1860–1921) with his talent and creative imagination has expanded the thematic boundaries of Armenian painting and graphic art, and he is really considered to be the founder of the historical genre and the creator of the national contemporary art of book illustrations. Sureniants had long studied and reproduced Armenian miniature, ornaments, folk applied art and architecture. He used all these in the book illustrations with higher artistic taste, culture and knowledge. The artist illustrated the poems “The Fountain of Bakhchisaray” by Alexander Pushkin and “Shahnameh” by Ferdowsi, as well as Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales and Maurice Maeterlinck’s plays; he also illustrated the compositions by Georges Rodenbach, Smbat Shahaziz, Alexander Tsaturian and many others. V. Sureniants was the first to refer to the illustrations of books of music or private works of Armenian composers.
Yeghishe Tadevossian’s (1870-1936) graphic works mainly include the studies of the artist’s famous paintings or the sketches in various pocketbooks. His art of book illustration is represented in some unique exhibits created on themes of Armenian legends and fairy tales. The artist is also known to have illustrated covers of Komitas’ separate song notes.
Mikael Khununts, who is almost a forgotten graphic artist in present day and has been prominent in the sphere of art of book illustration at the time, also descends from artists’ family. The NGA possesses his six illustrations of Armenian fairy tales which are unique exhibits. Those small-sized illustrations are mostly black and white or motley unique works formed and created obviously under the influence of modernism.
Georgi Yakoulov’s (1884-1928) first attempt of book illustration was the book cover of “ORIENTALIA” by Marietta Shahinian, in which he had used the way of illustration peculiar to the Armenian miniature. The unfinished sketch of the cover of the book “Magdalina” by A. Marienhof is especially noteworthy, which reflects stylistic movements typical to the art of the beginning of the 20th century.