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While in the West Abstract Art evolved from purely pictorial experimentation (although the Mother of them all, Dadaism, may have had some social content). in Soviet Armenia, Abstractionism symbolised (and manifested) the voice of explosive cork-bottled societal protest. And Artour OSHAKANTSI was one of the first to dare blow his top off, going, nay, racing headlong into a mad, sometimes bad, always wild abstraction, but rooted firmly in powerful colourful Fauvist structures. However,
like all true artists (whatever 'true' may mean),
OSHAKANTSI, while very learned in the history and
traditions of his metier, has no time at all for '-isms',
has reached beyond them to 'sheer painting', subtending a
wide range of themes, subjects and styles. Uniquely and single-handedly
in post-modern art of today, OSHAKANTSI has hit upon re-inventing
here and now in Britain, the almost forgotten Fayyum
Portraits of Hellenistic Egypt-highly individualistic
character-revelations of modern men and women, haunting
readings of their immortal souls, the icon-ic capture of
God's breath in action, creating the individual in his
own image. Infinitely variable yet somehow mysteriously
the same, that is, divinely deeply puzzled pieces of
human earth. Professor H. I. PILIKIAN ©HIP 1996 The Founder of Abstract Naturalism Arshile Gorky (1904-1948), the Armenian exile in America, invented the American Abstract Expressionism. His young disciple in Soviet Armenia, Artour Oshakantsi, became the greatest Armenian Abstract painter in the Soviet Union. A long spell in London, and a decade of experimentation led Oshakantsi to an iconographic synthetic style, which ironically only an analytical mind thinking in figurative terms, could achieve, creating a breakthrough new school of Painting which needs labelling ; I propose ABSTRACT NATURALISM, founded on so profound a spiritual/mythical symbolism as to encode almost heraldic medieval allegories. Oshakantsi is the abstract naturalist par excellence, and its Founder. |
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