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was born on the 20th of July 1928, in a little Armenian village-Djadjur. Leningrad, with its Academy of Fine Arts and its Hermitage, played a significant role in Avetisian's becoming an artist. Avetisian always remembers with gratitude his teachers, Johannson, Zaitsev and Khudiakov: they never hindered the natural expression of his own artistic individuality.
Both in his student years and after graduating from the Academy, Avetisian traveled widely around Armenia, eagerly seeking out historical monuments; he studied the Armenian miniature and the works of the greatest Armenian artists, above all, Saryan's.
Avetisian's real emergence as an artist was at the "Exhibition of Five" in Yerevan (1962), where he revealed himself as a mature painter with a bright individuality. Numerous specialists and visitors to the exhibition thought highly of his work. In the presence of a large group of visitors and representatives of the press, the French artist Jean Lurcat exclaimed: "This artist rivals France's best painters".
Avetisian follows the national traditions in painting, yet he never resorts to slavish imitation or stylization. But he shows great freedom and originality in his use of means of expression found in the work of ancient miniaturists: bright sonorous colors, coordination of pictorial tension throughout the entire surface of the canvas, rhythmic arrangement of lines, the static quality of representation, and the absence of perspective. And this is quite natural: like any artist of great talent, Avetisian has achieved an understanding of reality not so much through the study of the work of other masters, as through his own perception and interpretation of life.
Both in his student years and after graduating from the Academy, Avetisian traveled widely around Armenia, eagerly seeking out historical monuments; he studied the Armenian miniature and the works of the greatest Armenian artists, above all, Saryan's.
Avetisian's real emergence as an artist was at the "Exhibition of Five" in Yerevan (1962), where he revealed himself as a mature painter with a bright individuality. Numerous specialists and visitors to the exhibition thought highly of his work. In the presence of a large group of visitors and representatives of the press, the French artist Jean Lurcat exclaimed: "This artist rivals France's best painters".
Avetisian follows the national traditions in painting, yet he never resorts to slavish imitation or stylization. But he shows great freedom and originality in his use of means of expression found in the work of ancient miniaturists: bright sonorous colors, coordination of pictorial tension throughout the entire surface of the canvas, rhythmic arrangement of lines, the static quality of representation, and the absence of perspective. And this is quite natural: like any artist of great talent, Avetisian has achieved an understanding of reality not so much through the study of the work of other masters, as through his own perception and interpretation of life.
