Minas Avetisyan Armenian artist Date of Birth: 20.07.1928 Country: Armenia

Biography of Minas Avetisyan

Minas Avetisyan (1928–1975) was an Armenian artist who was born on July 20, 1928, in the village of Dzjadjur, in the Akhurian district, into a peasant family. He studied at the F. Terlemezyan State College of Fine Arts in Yerevan from 1947 to 1952, the Yerevan State Institute of Theatre and Fine Arts from 1952 to 1954, and the I.E. Repin Institute of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture in Leningrad from 1952 to 1954, where one of his main teachers was B.V. Ioganson. Avetisyan lived in Yerevan from 1960 onwards.

In his mature works, Avetisyan incorporated the principles of Fauvism, giving new life to his color-contrasting and expressive brushstroke paintings. His works also showed influences from the traditions of medieval Caucasian art. The artist's works, which combined a unique intensity of color with an epic dramatism of imagery, included landscapes, self-portraits, and genre-symbolic rural motifs such as "Baking Lavash" (1972) and "Landscape with Khachkars" (1974), both of which are housed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Yerevan. These paintings were considered breakthroughs in the pursuit of aesthetic self-expression at official exhibitions. Although Avetisyan leaned more towards French modernism and the early 20th-century avant-garde, he was also associated with the contemporary Russian "severe style."

Avetisyan also had success as a theater artist, working as a set designer for Aram Khachaturian's ballet "Gayane" at the Alexander Spendiaryan Opera and Ballet Theater in 1974, among other productions. He also worked as a muralist, creating paintings for factory interiors in Leninakan-Gyumri from 1970 to 1974.

Tragically, Avetisyan died in a car accident in Yerevan on February 24, 1975.