Hovhannes Zardaryan was an Armenian artist. He created his paintings in the styles of Realism and Expressionism. He is considered to be one of the distinguished classic representatives of Armenian Painting.
Background
Zardaryan was born in Kars, Turkey, on January 8, 1918, in the family of a craftsman. During the mass exodus following the Armenian Genocide, Hovhannes Zardaryan's family moved first to Armavir, Russia, then Krasnodar, also Russia, and finally settled in Tiflis (now Tbilisi), Georgia, in 1920.
Education
In Georgia, the future artist Hovhannes Zardaryan made his first steps of creative activity at the local Academy of Fine Arts (now Tbilisi State Academy of Arts). But in a short period, around 1933, the Zardaryan moved to Yerevan. Hovhannes continued his education at the Applied Arts School and graduated four years later from the studio of Sedrak Arakelian and Vahram Gaifejian.
Then, the artist continued his professional education in the Department of Monumental Painting of the Imperial Academy of Arts of Leningrad (now Ilya Repin St. Petersburg State Academic Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture).
Career
Zardaryan returned to Armenia in early 1941. At that time he was distinguished as one of the most promising young painters. He was one of several artists, who were exempted from military service during the Second World War. He returned to Russia in 1944 with the series of still lifes and Armenian landscapes that were selected for the Exhibition of Armenian Art.
Back in Armenia, Hovhannes Zardaryan collaborated with different artists of the state. The artist’s artworks of this period were multi-genre and comprehensive. The historical portraits by the young artist ("The Musicologist Komitas", 1950-52, "Nakhashavigh" [The First Path]) as large-scale compositions of substantial solutions were of monumental nature; they attracted the attention of the famous art historians of the time.
In 1955 Zardaryan was commissioned by the State History Museum of Armenia to paint the canvas "The Crossing of River Araks. The Banishment of Armenians by Abbas I of Persia, 1604". This was his first multi-figured historic and thematic painting, which at the time theorists considered to be an ordinary illustration.
In 1956-1958 Zardaryan participated in international exhibitions in Prague and India as well as Biennale in Venice. After his first steps of creative activity, he received a number of awards and titles as well as had a number of exhibitions. But during those years both in the Soviet Union and abroad Zardaryan was represented only as an artist of social realistic thoughts.
Later the works "Spring" 1956 and "Aspiration" 1960, heralded a new creative period. These artworks were distinguished by evident substance as a call for freedom, with symbolic images and fresh colour solutions.
The evidence of the artist’s "dissident inclinations" makes his personal exhibition being open in the framework of "The Centenary of the Genocide" at the National Gallery of Armenia. The sixty paintings were exhibited under the common title "Exodus". These paintings created during 1957-1979 contradicted the official Soviet ideology with their subject matter and artistic approach.
Hovhannes Zardaryan lived and actively worked until 1992.
Membership
Zardarian was elected full member of the USSR Academy of Arts in 1988 (since 1992 the Russian Academy of Arts).