Armenia’s bleak pictures of the past
Daniel Bardsley, Correspondent
YEREVAN, ARMENIA // Yelena Abrahamyan is one of the dwindling number of
survivors of what Armenia describes as the genocide against its people
nearly a century ago.
Now 97, the artist admits she is concerned her country could establish
relations with neighbouring Turkey, which rejects Armenia’s assertion
that 1.5 million people died when the Ottoman authorities drove them
from what was then Western Armenia.
Turkey, which shut its border with Armenia in the early 1990s in a
dispute over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh territory, officially part
of Azerbaijan, claims the death toll was 300,000.
The two countries have held talks over establishing diplomatic
relations, which Armenia has said it is prepared to do without Turkey’s
acceptance that `genocide’ took place.
Any border reopening would be expected to lift Armenia’s stuttering
economy, but Ms Abrahamyan believes the genocide issue should take
precedence.
`Until they recognise the genocide, they shouldn’t open the border,’ she
said. `I don’t think they will recognise it any time.’
Her cousin, the daughter of her aunt, was among those who died during
the events that Ms Abrahamyan says she remembers `very well’.
After moving to present-day Armenia in 1920, Ms Abrahamyan went on to
become a distinguished artist during the Soviet era.
She was part of a group of artists who moved into an apartment block in
the centre of Yerevan when it was completed in 1951.
In an arrangement common at the time, the accommodation was provided by
the local artists’ union and as many as 28 artists lived in or had
studios in the block, where Ms Abrahamyan still lives.
Sometimes painters had to produce work that reflected the communist
policies of the times, and Ms Abrahamyan was no exception.
Holding a black-and-white leaflet about her paintings, with text in
Russian, she pointed at a 1961 portrait of a woman in a farmyard setting.
`This was a woman who works on a collective farm,’ she said. `She is not
an interesting woman, you can see. It is nothing as a portrait but I was
made to do it. Everybody was made to paint the villages and collective
workers.’
But not all of her pictures had a socialist agenda: her walls showcase
vibrant and colourful paintings of coastal scenery, churches and
countryside.
In her spare room canvases are stacked up by the dozen, and a white
metal pot on her sideboard contains brushes of different sizes.
Ms Abrahamyan is the only artist left in the apartment block, which
overlooks Yerevan’s opera house, whose many hoardings for forthcoming
productions are testament to the continued thriving of the city’s
artistic scene.
While the other artists have died, about 80 per cent of the flats are
occupied by their descendants, according to Anahit Stepanyan, also a
resident of the block and herself a painter’s daughter.
`Later on, there were a few other buildings for painters, but this was
probably the first one,’ she said.
`Nearly all the painters living here were famous and most of them were
teaching in the art academy or art colleges.’ Ms Stepanyan’s father,
Suren Stepanyan, was born in 1915 to parents who came from what was then
Western Armenia.
Like Ms Abrahamyan, he moved into the building in 1951 and was based
there until his death in 1977, when his flat passed to his family.
More than two dozen of his paintings, ranging from early realist
pictures to more abstract designs, are displayed in his daughter’s flat.
Many foreign travellers to Yerevan get the chance to enjoy the paintings
as, like some other residents of the block, Ms Stepanyan runs a homestay.
As well as painting in oil and other media, Stepanyan produced wood
carvings and metalwork, including a medallion presented to the Soviet
former chess world champion Tigran Petrosyan.
He also illustrated magazines and books written by some renowned
Armenian writers.
`He got a lot of orders for these things,’ Ms Stepanyan said. `They were
all government [magazines] but they were very good.
`There was huge support for the sciences, culture and education. The
people didn’t have to think about earning money, they were just creating.’
Her sister Gayane said their father was fortunate in that he rarely had
to produce art that could be described as propaganda. `My father didn’t
do such things because he was too high,’ she said. `He was very talented
and he was very free.’
According to Vardan Azatyan, an art historian at Yerevan State Academy
of Fine Arts, it was also `quite common’ for the state to provide
buildings for composers and writers.
He said artists suffered `harsh and strict controls’ under Joseph
Stalin, who died in 1953, but the situation eased under his successor,
Nikita Khrushchev.
`It’s a very common feeling, especially in Armenia, that the Soviet-era
artists, they think they were forced to do something against their
will,’ he said.
This `rejectionism’ of socialist realism, as Mr Azatyan describes the
feelings that Ms Abrahamyan and others have towards some of the work of
the time, means such art is rarely exhibited in Armenia.
`In the National Gallery of Armenia, there’s no exposition of the works
of socialist realism,’ he said.
`But it’s a kind of art and it’s a period of history that this and other
Soviet countries went through.’
—
Yelena Abrahamyan shows her artwork in a room located in her central
Yerevan apartment. Onnik Krikorian / The National
—
90618/FOREIGN/906179982/1002