Ara Sarkissian is considered the founder of Soviet Armenian sculpture.
He
was born in the suburb of Makrikeuy, near Constantinople, on April 7,
1902. He studied at the local Dadian School, and after 1914, when his
family moved to the neighborhood of Pera, in the city, he attended the
Essayan School. After working menial jobs during the war to make some
money, he studied at the local Art School from 1919-1921 and then he
moved to Rome to continue studies there, but after half year he entered
the Vienna School of Masters (1921-1924). In both schools he already
showed progress in sculpture, and the impact of World War I and the
Armenian Genocide leaned him towards tragic subjects.
Still
a student, in 1921-1922 he collaborated in Rome, Vienna, and Berlin in
the logistics of the Operation Nemesis, at a time when the liquidations
of former Ottoman Prime Minister Said Halim pasha and genocidaires
Behaeddin Shakir and Jemal Azmi were being planned. Sarkissian appears
as A.S. in the Armenian original of Arshavir Shiragian’s memoirs (1965),
although his mention has been eliminated in the English translation.
In
1924 Sarkissian was granted Soviet citizenship in Vienna and the next
year he settled in Yerevan, where he would live the rest of his life. In
1926 he organized the Soviet Armenian chapter of the Association of
Painters of Revolutionary Russia and was elected its president. Six
years later he became the founding president of the Painters Union of
Armenia until 1937. In 1945 he became the founding director of the
Institute of Art of Yerevan (now the Art Academy of Yerevan) until 1959,
and later he was head of chair and director of the atelier until his
death.
In
the 1920s and 1930s Sarkissian’s busts of Armenian writers and
intellectuals were characterized by their expressiveness. During World
War II, he sculpted busts of Armenian soldiers and various patriotic
compositions. One of his best works, the statue of Bolshevik
revolutionary Sergei Kirov, was installed in Kirovakan (formerly
Gharakilise) in 1942, but after the fall of the Soviet regime and the
renaming of Kirovakan into Vanadzor, it was retired in 1992. During his
life he participated in many exhibitions in Yerevan, Tbilisi, and
Moscow.
In
1949 he was elected corresponding member of the Soviet Academy of Arts
and became a full member in 1958. In 1963 he earned the title of
People’s Artist of the USSR.
Sarkissian’s
most recognizable works are the statues of Hovhannes Tumanian and
Alexander Spendiarian in front of the Yerevan Opera House (1957), which
he co-authored with Ghugas Chubarian, and the statues of Mesrob
Mashdots and Sahak Bartev in the courtyard of the main building of
Yerevan State University.
Ara
Sarkissian's participation in the Operation Nemesis and his involvement
with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation had remained unknown in
Soviet Armenia for obvious political reasons. However, in the last years
it has been disclosed that his dismissal from the post of director of
the Institute of Art in 1959 was due to the fact that he had a brother
in Greece who was an A.R.F. leader and whom he met that year in
Brussels. It is suspected that his sudden death on June 13, 1969, two
days after being discharged from the hospital after a surgery for a
broken foot, was linked to the previous discovery that the sculptor had
been involved in the Operation Nemesis four decades before.
Ara
Sarkissian was posthumously awarded the USSR State Prize (1971). The
two-floor house that he shared with painter Hakob Kojoyan became a
house-museum dedicated to both artists in 1973.
