ON OCCASION OF ARSHIL GORKI’S 100TH ANNIVERSARY HIS LETTERS PUBLISHED
YEREVAN, MAY 18, NOYAN TAPAN. On the occasion of the 100th birthday
of Arshil Gorki, a greatest abstract artist of the 20th century, the
his “Namakani” (collection of letters) was published under the state
order. As Seyranuhi Geghamian, the book editor informed the Noyan
Tapan correspondent, the artist wrote the letters included in the
book during the last 10 years of his life, in the native language,
and mainly addressed to his younger sister. A.Gorki’s letters were
first uncompletely published in the “Ararat” monthly of Boston in 1971
in English translation. They were published by the artist’s younger
sister’s son, Karlen Muradian who studied his uncle’s life and works
during his whole life. Gorki’s letters were completely, again in
English, published in 1978 in K.Muradian’s “Arshil Gorki-Adoyan” book
where interviews with people close to Gorki were also included. Later,
in 1984, the letters were published in Portuguese in Lisbon in a
catalog-album of an exhibition of Gorki’s paintings organized by
Vardush and Karlen Muradian in the Modern Art Museus of the Kulpenkian
institution. According to Seyranuhi Geghamian, Arshil Gorki’s death as
well as the whole life was tragic. The great artist lived 44 years,
but during his lifetime he did not see the fame he deserved. Gorki’s
art became widely recognized and appreciated at the international
level only after his death. Today American great art critics rank
Gorki among American great modern artists. In one of his letters
Arshil Gorki wrote; “I always see my homeland in my dreams and it
seems that an Armenian soul lodged inside me leads my hand to create
shadows of our Adoyan family’s yards, of our lovely nature in Khorgom,
our beautiful Armenia in a place far form our homeland. We lost our
Armenian and I shall again possess it with my work.” Gorki worked in
all genres of fine arts: painting, wall-painting, sculpture. The artist
characterized his art in this way: “The Armenian soul always speaks
in my paintings. Though Turks distroyed our culture and massacred our
people, in any case, we went on struggling and expressing ourselves
with the help of art. I’ll interprete Armenia for the whole world,
and when we, like everybody, become dust, people will say: “The son
of the Armenian land made his contribution in the development of the
world culture.”
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress