National Gallery of Armenia

 Exhibition dedicated to the 100th anniversary of painter Arpenik Nalbandyan opens on October 28, 2016, at 15:00 at the National Gallery of Armenia.

Painter Arpenik Nalbandyan was born in 1916 in Georgia. She got her professional education at Tbilisi State Academy of Arts. Besides the academy, Alexander Bazhbeuk-Melikyan also played a great role in the development of Nalbandyan’s art. His influence was obvious especially in Arpenik’s works of earlier period. In 1941, Nalbandyan married Eduard Issabekian and moved to Yerevan. The painter was involved in the country’s cultural life; she actively participated in republican and union exhibitions, was engaged in public activity and pedagogics (from 1947 until the end of her life she taught in Yerevan State Institute of Art and Theatre). In 1943 and 1948 she had personal exhibitions in Yerevan.
The exhibition dedicated to the painter’s 100th anniversary comprises artworks of her various creative periods, including about forty-eight paintings from the storage and permanent exhibition of the National Gallery of Armenia as well as seventeen canvases from the family collection.
Arpenik Nalbandyan worked in various genres (portraits, landscapes and still lifes), though portraits always prevailed in her art. Her realistic portraits and landscapes were characterized by true interpretation, tender lyricism and harmonious and saturated colours. Such artistic solutions gave expressiveness to the depiction; they made the mountain landscapes monumental and authentic and gave psychological nuances to portraits.
The painter died in 1964. Throughout her comparatively short creative activity she made about 300 works. They are preserved in the collection of the National Gallery of Armenia, in the History Museum of Armenia and in family and other private collections.
The year 2016 marks the 100th anniversary of Arpenik Nalbandyan. In spite of the painter’s numerous awards, titles and current exhibitions in her lifetime, nevertheless, her art has not been presented in a proper way. Today, thanks to the cooperation of the main museum and her family about sixty-five works by A. Nalbandyan are presented to Armenian art loving society. On the occasion of the anniversary exhibition a catalogue was published. For the first time it comprises comprehensive interpretation of the artist’s life and creative activity. This makes one more opportunity to remember and estimate her art anew.

 The exhibition curator Hasmik Badalyan