Yerevan 1924

Martiros Sarian’s “Yerevan” is a 69 x 69 cm oil on canvas painting. The application of paint is thick, especially in the rendering of the trees. The intensity of the colors and bold brushwork give a sense of the hot Armenian sun, and the way it beats down on the city. Sarian was committed to depicting the Armenian landscape, and to doing so in a distinctly modern way. He trained in Moscow and was exposed to a variety of avant-garde influences. Yet, he seems to have been less interested in complete abstraction than in finding a visual language adequate to his subject. Oil paint, of course, is a medium closely associated with the rise of industrial capitalism. Pigments, once derived from laborious handwork, could now be purchased in tubes, commercially produced and globally distributed. It allowed for greater expressive freedom for artists everywhere, yet it is interesting that Sarian chose to focus this freedom on scenes of simple, even traditional life. The work involved in the production of materials is thrown into sharp relief with that of labor in the painting itself.