Martiros Sarian

Winner of the Grand Prix de l’Exposition Internationale de Paris in 1937 and of the Lenin Prize in 1961, considered in the U.S.S.R. as one of the greatest painters of the 20th century, Martiros Sergueievich Sarian died in Terevan in 1972, showered with tokens of veneration, homage and honours. He was 92. After the death of the painter, his house in Terevan became a national museum . He left his native Armenia at an early age, first for Moscow (where he studied at the Schoool of Fine Arts), then to travel (in Turkey, Egypt and Iran), looking for images which mingled with the fabulous culture of the Caucasus, were to forever colour his work: lights of the Orient, both bright and laconic. Between 1926 and 1928 Sarian was in Paris. Nothing remains of this period, as his pictures were lost with the boat carrying them back to Armenia. Sarian never left Armenia again and never ceased to exalt it in his landscapes, still-lives and portraits. He remained faithful all this life to his earliest pictorial choices (even though over the years his colours, at first violently contrasting, were subtly toned down).

Sauf mardi, n°40, été 1980