Léon Arthur Tutundjian was an Armenian painter who reached the highest fame in France.
Background
Leon Tutundjian was born in 1905 in Amasya, in Sivas Vilayet in the Ottoman Empire. Tutundjian came from a relatively wealthy and educated family. His father and grandfather were teachers. Leon learned to speak French, and dreamed of moving to Paris. Unfortunately, the family moved often so his father could procure teaching jobs.
Tutundjian's life changed dramatically when his father died from cerebral hemorrhage around 1915. Without a primary provider, the family was soon destitute and Tutundjian's mother was forced to sell the family's possessions to care for her children. However, the family did settle down for a time.
In 1921 - 1922, Tutundjian's mother placed her son on a boat with other Armenian orphans head to Greece from Constantinople. He was sixteen or seventeen years of age at the time, older than most of the orphans, but the separation from his mother was still difficult for him. Because of the sad memories associated with this parting, Tutundjian always hated to travel, particularly on boats.
Education
Tutundjian was able to study at the Berberian and Getronagan schools in Constantinople since his father had taught there. In 1923, Léon Arthur Tutundjian stayed briefly at the Armenian monastery of the Mekhitarist Brotherhood in the St. Lazzaro island of Venice, Italy, where he studied science and Armenian illuminated manuscripts. In 1924, at the age of nineteen, Tutundjian arrived in Paris and studied art at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
Léon Arthur Tutundjian arrived in Paris in 1923 having passed by Greece and Italy. In 1925 - 1926 he began giving gouaches of expressionistic style before executing an important series of collages. In 1927, his first paintings were abstracted and geometrical; he was close to neoplastic and constructivist tendencies.
Between 1926 and 1929, Léon Tutundjian realized drawings in the high-quality ink, where the main elements of his formal directory (curved straight, circles and spheres, not regular quadrangles) were held in a game of tensions skilfully balanced, in front of ranges of pulverized ink creating an illusion of cosmic or atmospheric space; these drawings were reminiscent of the graphic work of Kandinsky.
In 1930, Léon participated in the foundation of the Art concrete beside Van Doesburg, Hélion, Carlsund, and Wantz, followed the following year by the Group Abstraction-Création, of which he was a founding member. He also realized reliefs, generally consisted of a wooden plan supporting fine iron stalks and the metallic elements where the circular dominate forms.
In 1932, Leon was converted to the surrealism; its paintings, accurately painted, were then inhabited by biomorphique forms. In 1958, up to his death, Leon returned to a pure abstraction, in which certain lyric was not absent. The artist died in December 1968 in Paris, France.
Achievements
Léon Arthur Tutundjian was distinguished for his paintings "La Boule Noire", "Nature morte a la coupe de fruits", "Composition cellulaire au cercle rouge", and "Pommes."
