| Monument to Martiros Saryan«Life is an island. People come out of the sea, cross the island, Martiros Saryan Saryan was one of the plead of major cultural figures of Armenia at the turn of the century. His work, in common with the library contributions of O. Tumanian and A. Isaakian, those of T. Toramanian and A. Tamanian in architecture, and of Komitas in national music, set the standard of national art, and laid the foundations for its flowering in the Soviet period.
He was born in 1880 and dead in 1972. In the course of his long life, Saryan experienced much sorrow and much joy. He witnessed the two World Wars and the tragedy of genocide in Armenia in 1915. He suffered the destruction of many of his paintings, and the death of his beloved son.Saryan was striving to represent nature symbolically as a «living entity». The works which Saryan began to show at Moscow exhibitions were executed mainly in watercolors and tempera. They include: «Flowering Mountains», «The Comet», «By the sea: Sphinx», «Two Panthers», «Under the Pomegranate», «At the Well on a Hot Day» and others. Saryan's work is not limited to his paintings in oil and -later -tempera: he also drew a great deal and painted in watercolors. His sketches from life are outstanding. Saryan was famous for his work in the field of book illustration. Particularly in the 1930s, he worked enthusiastically in graphics and did his wonderful illustrations to the works of Tumanian, Isaakian, Charents, and to the poem of Firdawsi, «Shah-Nameh», Saryan also worked in monumental painting and in the sphere of theatrical design. |
