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YEREVAN, JUNE 25, ARMENPRESS: The Cafesjian Center for the Arts will open the exhibition “Haroutiun Galentz: Color as Form” on June 27. This was reported to Armenpress by the Head of the Department for Public Relations and Marketing of the Cafesjian Center for the Arts Lilit Sokhakyan.
The exhibition "Haroutiun Galentz: Color as Form" organized as part of the Museum Networking program of the Cafesjian Center for the Arts features a selection of works from the Galentz Museum.
Since the painter worked in three basic genres – still life, landscape and portraiture – this exhibition thus provides an opportunity for the public to better understand the expression of the artist’s color vision from different angles. For Galentz, color was not something used to indicate the external character of this or that phenomenon. As Matisse liked to say, “When I put a green, it is not grass. When I put a blue, it is not the sky.” The same held true for Galentz. With color blotches and layers, he would build form, volume, chiaroscuro, and construct perspective. He would do all this freely and without restraint; only guided by aesthetic principles.
This exhibition points out Galentz’s creative rumination, formulated specific language and final passing from reality to almost abstract forms. Graphic series included in the exhibition open a passageway to the “creative sanctum”, where the master would perfect his mark, experimenting with new forms and approaches, and later conveying them to canvas. This is an almost unknown corner for the viewer in the multilayered creative legacy of Galentz.
The exhibition “Haroutiun Galentz: Color as Form” is yet another step on the path to introduce the artist to a much wider audience, and not only Armenian. Such an initiative reflects the mission of the Cafesjian Art Center. The world created by Galentz, however unreal, is equally real to the extent that it exists on the canvas surface and directly relates to the principal laws dictated by nature – balance and harmony. As Galentz used to say: “In the end, all “isms” will disappear. They will be subsumed in one totality, they will become nature.”
The exhibition will last till September 22, 2013. The admission to the Eagle Gallery is free.
Galentz was born inKyurin, Ottoman Empire (present dayTurkey) on March 27 of 1910. His father owned a wool-dying factory which left a profound impression on young Galentz with its vats of bright colors. In 1915, during the Armenian genocide, Galentz’s father was taken away by Turkish soldiers, never to be seen again. Galentz along with his three brothers and mother escaped toAleppo, Syria. A few days after Galentz’s mother died of starvation and fatigue. Galentz and his three brothers spent their childhood and youth in an Aleppo orphanage. Despite the hardships of life in the orphanage, Galentz began cultivating his passion for arts in part by encouragement from one of the orphanage sisters. He often escaped the orphanage to roam around the Aleppo markets and paint.
In 1922, at the age of 12, Galentz left the orphanage to become an apprentice to a lithographer and later received his primary artistic education from Onik Avetisyan in Aleppo. He then followed his brothers to Tripoli, Lebanon where they had opened a photo studio. Galentz painted backgrounds to be used in the photo sessions. From 1929-1933, the French painterClaude Michuletwas his teacher in Beirut Academy of Fine Arts, where he then taught painting until 1939.
Galentz was awarded the Medal of Merit by the presidium of International Exhibitions in New York in 1939, and the honorary prize by the government of Lebanon for his bas-reliefs in the Pavilion of Lebanon presented at the New York International exhibition.
In 1938 he took into apprenticeship a young woman by the name of Armine Paronyan (Galentz), whom he later married on May 2, 1943. Armine became a prominent Armenian painter alongside her husband.
Galentz and family expatriated to Yerevan, Armenia in June 1946. The next year he participated in a group show organized to exhibit the works of newly expatriated painters. He participated in group exhibitions organized by the Artists Union, of which he was a member since 1947. He held several solo shows both in Yerevan and in Moscow and was posthumously awarded Armenian Republic’s (SSR) State Prize in 1967.
Galentz’s house in Yerevan is now a museum. His paintings are also in the collections of the National Museum of Armenia (Yerevan), Republic of Armenia’s Cultural Ministry as well as private collections in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tbilisi, New York, Paris, Vienna, Beirut, Aleppo, Cambridge, San Francisco, Los Angeles to list a few.