Armenian Genocide in Art
24 Apr, 2010 Featured, History, Homepage Armenian Genocide
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The Woman of Sassoun by Arshak Fetvadjian (1866 – 1947)
One of the first artists to depict the Armenian Genocide in art was
Arshak Fetvadjian. His painting, The Woman of Sassoun displays a woman
breastfeeding her child with a rifle in one hand atop a mountain.
Sassoun was the site of the first major Armenian resistance movement
during the Hamidian Massacres of 1894. Sassountsis continued to resist
Turkish and Kurdish encroachment until Armenians were completely wiped
out during the Armenian Genocide of 1915.
L’Esperance by Hovsep Pushman (1877 – 1966)A painting entitled
L’Esperance by the Armenian-American artist Hovsep Pushman,
symbolizing hope for the future, was presented to President Woodrow
Wilson on November 27, 1917 by an Armenian delegation in recognition
of the help the United States gave to Armenia. The girl in the
painting is Pushman’s niece, she is holding a flower called antaram,
which means everlasting in Armenian. The painting hangs at the Drawing
Room of the Woodrow Wilson House in Washington D.C.
Arshile Gorky’s The Artist and His Mother is based on a photograph of
a young Gorky and his mother taken when they were refugees in the
Democratic Republic of Armenia. Gorky had escaped the Armenian
Genocide from Van with his mother and four sisters in 1915. His mother
died of starvation in Yerevan in 1919 when Gorky was 15. One version
of this painting is held in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New
York City, the other is in the National Gallery of Art Washington, DC.
Panos Terlemezian was one of the organizers of the self-defense of Van
from the 19th of April until the 4th of May, 1915. Having survived the
assault on Van thanks to the advance of Russian forces, Terlemezian
moved to Yerevan. He featured the composer Komitas in many of his
works. Komitas was one of the Armenian intellectuals who was arrested
and deported together with 180 other Armenian notables to Central
Anatolia on April 24, 1915. Thanks to the intervention of U.S.
ambassador Henry Morgenthau, by special orders from Talat Pasha,
Komitas was sent back to Constantinople after 15 days. Having gone mad
after witnessing the Armenian Genocide, Komitas died in a Paris
psychiatric clinic in 1935.
The Artist and His Mother by Arshile Gorky (1904-1948)
Komitas by Panos Terlemezian (1865-1941)
Vardges Surenyants (1860-1921), a native of Tiflis, painted several
works that depicted the suffering of his kin under Ottoman rule
following the Hamidian Massacres.
The Abandoned (1899)
After the Massacre (1899)
Profanation of the Shrine (1895)
French artist Jansem was born Hovhannes Semerdjian in 1920 in the town
of Selez near Bursa. His family escaped to Greece in 1922 in fear for
their lives. In 1931 they moved to Paris and settled in the suburb of
Issy-les-Moulineaux. In 2001 Jansem visited Armenia for the second
time by the invitation of then president Robert Kocharyan. He donated
34 canvases entitled Genocide to the Armenian Genocide Museum and
Institute in Yerevan.
Homme, femme et enfant
Requiem
Desolation
Etude pour violence
Various
Genocide (circa 1960) by Gerardo Orakian
Crucifixion (1961) by Paul Guiragossian
The Captured (2000) by Hagop Hagopian
Crucifixion (1988) by Hagop Khoubesserian
Deportation: On the Road to Der-Zor (1965 – 1967) by Minas Avetissian
Deportation (1999) by Vahé Gasparyan