National Gallery of Armenia

                      A  soul  becomes  visible  and  acquires  a  shape  by  means  of  art  created  by  man,  but  art  is  also  an  innate  quality  of  man.  Is  there  any  need  to  distinguish  kinds  of  art:  architecture,  music,  painting,  sculpture,  poetry? ... Hardly.  The  soul  does  not  get  defiled  and  does  not  die  like  material.   The  soul (art)  and  the  body (material)  are  in  a  long,  uncompromising  struggle.  Everything  physical  gets  old,  worn  out,  and  comes  to  an  end,  sometimes  with  disappointment... The  greatest  enjoyments  given  to  the  man  to  experience  physically  are  accompanied  by  disappointment  and  they  coexist  in  parallel.. - all  great  enjoyments  on  the  whole,  but  the  spiritual  enjoyment...  It  never  gets  old,  it  seems  to  me  the  main  meaning  is  there,  that  is  why  it  does  not  get  old...  and finally,  when  was  “The  Birth  of  Vahagn”  created? At  the  moment  one  reads  the  History  by  Khorenatsi,  or  two  thousand  years  ago,  or  maybe  one  hundred  thousand  years  ago?  Owing  to  the  soul (art),  our  life  is  not  confined  to  decades,  it  is  eternal.     

                                                                                                                                                                                                        Hagop Hagopian

 The exhibition is an opportunity to represent the whole creative way of the painter more completely. It includes the artist’s works from so-called Egyptian, Soviet and independence periods. The joint exhibition of paintings, graphic works as well as sculptures of the latest period from the family collection and from the collection of the NGA make this event more comprehensive.The Egyptian Armenian artist first studied in Melkonian Boarding School then at the Academy of Arts (Cairo) and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in France. In 1962, the artist, already famous abroad, repatriated to Soviet Armenia and brought in a new life and a new peculiar and artistic way of thinking to not only Armenian Fine Arts but also to the Soviet art in general.

In Soviet reality the artists of the Thaw generation of the 1960’s finally had the opportunity to get in touch with European Contemporary art and that of the USA. And the artist just returned from abroad and influenced by western art sources had to do new revelations exactly in his motherland. The accomplished artist’s true depictions of the reality in restrained colours had self-conscious, allegorical and dramatic nature. Regardless of the artist’s genre preference they became peculiar analytic works of severe artistic style in Armenian art.

  Later, the eighty-year old master also presented his sculptures to the public. Throughout his creative life the artist was awarded numerous titles and prizes. He presented himself with personal and group exhibitions in former Soviet countries, in European countries (France, Italy and Germany) as well as in the USA and Canada.  

Hagop Hagopian “Introspection” exhibition