Yeranuhi Aslamazyan

Biography

The date of Yeranuhi Aslamazyan’s birth is given in different ways. Most often it is 15 April 1909 (28 April, Old Style), but some sources give 1910. She was born in the village of Bash-Shirak in the Caucasus, then part of the Russian Empire; in childhood her family moved to Gyumri, which was then called Alexandropol. Her father, Arshak Aslamazyan, was a well-known miller who in the 1920s was classed as a kulak, a wealthy peasant, and gradually deprived of his property.

She began her studies in Gyumri, in 1924–1926, then moved to the Yerevan art college, where she studied until 1928 or 1929 (the sources differ). With her elder sister Mariam she went to Moscow, on money from a third sister, Anahit. Vkhutemas, the state art and technical school in Moscow, accepted only Mariam; Yeranuhi entered the studio of Vladimir Favorsky and Andrei Goncharov. Life in Moscow was hard, and after a year the sisters went back to Yerevan.

In Yerevan she worked in a kindergarten and designed decorations for city festivals. Two years later she left for Kharkiv, to an art institute, and from there transferred to Leningrad. From 1931 to 1937 she studied at the Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, in the studio of Aleksandr Osmerkin, and graduated with honours.

From 1938 to 1941 she taught painting and composition at the Leningrad Young Workers’ Institute of Fine Art. By the end of the 1930s she was already known: she belonged to the Leningrad Artists’ Union and regularly took part in exhibitions in Moscow, Leningrad and Yerevan.

During the Second World War, which Soviet usage calls the Great Patriotic War, she made works that responded to the demands of the time, and in 1945 she received the medal “For Valiant Labour in the Great Patriotic War 1941–1945”. According to some sources she lived in Moscow from 1943 and stayed there for the rest of her life. From these years comes “Portrait of a Labour Hero” (1946, Tretyakov Gallery).

Now to what she actually did. The core of her work is portraits and landscapes, but there were also still lifes, genre paintings, theatre design and printmaking. From 1958 she worked in ceramics. In the same year she had solo exhibitions in Moscow and Leningrad. Among her known works are “Portrait of Iosif Orbeli” (1951, National Gallery of Armenia), “The Ararat Valley” (1955, Tretyakov Gallery), “Hayrivank” (1956), “Baking Lavash” (1955) and “Eastern Trade” (1967) in the Dresden gallery, and “Fruits of Armenia” (1985). Armenia remained her main subject: she travelled there and painted its people and landscapes, for example “Pink Ararat” and “The White Cliffs of Sevan”. To my mind, the school of Osmerkin shows in these works: dense colour and free, broad handling.

In 1959–1962 she visited Belgium, Holland, Italy, Turkey, India, Ceylon and Egypt. The journeys gave her paintings and graphic works, as well as ceramics.

She was awarded the title of Honoured Artist of the Armenian SSR in 1965. In 1978 she received the “Veteran of Labour” medal. She was a member of the Artists’ Union of the USSR.

In 1987 the Gallery of the Sisters Mariam and Yeranuhi Aslamazyan opened in Gyumri, and the sisters gave it more than 620 paintings, ceramics and graphic works. Today it is the House-Museum of the Aslamazyan Sisters. Her works are held in museums in Armenia, Russia and other countries.

Yeranuhi Aslamazyan died on 4 February 1998 in Moscow and was buried in the Armenian Cemetery.