Knarik Vardanyan: Time, Space, Motion

The Cafesjian Center for the Arts continues the important mission of discovering women artists.

The art of Knarik Vardanyan (1914–1996) is about exploring and recognizing every element of life in its entirety—from the real, tangible, accessible, everyday matters to the unattainable, intangible, cosmic horizons.

The Cafesjian Center for the Arts continues the important mission of discovering women artists who have remained on the margins of the Armenian art history. The exhibition, Knarik Vardanyan: Time, Space, Motion is a major project presenting this remarkable artist with her full artistic potential, after years of silence.

Across her decades-long and rich oeuvre, the force that consistently pushed the artist forward was motion—not something she was merely interested in, but something she was deeply fascinated with. In her diaries and articles, the artist repeatedly returns to the phenomenon of motion, and her works vividly reflect that. If in her paintings from the 1950s this appears only indirectly (Bottles or Armenian Still Life), then starting from the second half of the 1960s, motion becomes not merely a cornerstone, but the artist's primary motivation for making art in general — especially in her landscapes. Aesthetically, the most monumental perception of motion reaches its climax in her works of the 1970s–1980s, when the artist transitions from earthly movements to interplanetary, cosmic realms.

“Time and space are defined by motion,” she notes in the title of one article preserved in her diaries. In another part one can read: “The main aim of my painting is to express movement—in the broadest sense.” Thus, the study of the relationship among time, space, and motion stood at the very center of Knarik Vardanyan's art. Over several decades, movement transformed into the painter's artistic philosophy—precisely what she was striving for.

Most of the approximately fifty works on view come from the collection of Narek Van Ashughatoyan, while a number of works and important archival materials have been provided by the National Gallery of Armenia. For the first time, the exhibition also presents the artist's private, intimate creative “lab”, where through drawings she studied nature, architecture, the cosmos, and, most importantly, herself.

Knarik Vardanyan: Time, Space, Motion is the largest exhibition ever dedicated to the artist, and in content it reflects her manifesto: “The artist must follow the laws of nature and create the form and all its constituent elements in organic unity. This idea is no longer an understanding of style, but a conviction that the form must be connected with the reality.”

Biography

1914 Born in the village of Kaftarlı (present-day Panik), Armenia

1933 Graduated from the Leninakan (present-day Gyumri) Construction Technical College, Armenia

1933–1934 Worked at Alexander Tamanyan's studio as an architectural technician, Yerevan, Armenia

1934–1937 Worked at Karo Halabyan's studio as a senior architectural technician, Moscow, Russia

1938–1941 Studied at the Yerevan Art College, Armenia

1938–1941 Worked as an artist at the Yerevan State Opera, Armenia

1942 Worked at the Yerevan Puppet Theater as chief stage designer and sculptor, Armenia

1944 Studied at the Republican Two-Year Higher Courses in Moscow for puppet-theater designers, Russia

1945–1950 Studied at the Yerevan Art Institute, Armenia

1945–1950 Created stage designs for the Yerevan State Opera, the Yerevan State Youth Theatre, and the Amo Kharazyan Artashat Theater, Armenia

1951–1952 Studied under Academician Boris Ioganson at the House of Armenian Culture in Moscow

1953 Became a member of the Artists' Union of Armenia

1967 Awarded with the title of Honored Artist of the Armenian SSR

1969 Participated in an exhibition with Minas Avetisyan and Hovhannes Sharambeyan in Paris, France

Held solo exhibitions in Yerevan (1965, 1978, 1981), Gyumri (1981), Vanadzor (1981), Yeghegnadzor (1982), and Tbilisi (1982).

Took part in group exhibitions in Lithuania, Estonia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Cuba, Germany, France, and Denmark.

Delivered numerous lectures in Armenia and abroad and authored dozens of articles, including texts on the art of R. Shishmanyan, N. Zaryan, G. Grigoryan (Giotto), L. Khanamiryan, H. Galentz, and others.

Knarik Vardanyan passed away in 1996 in Yerevan.

A posthumous exhibition was organized in 1998 at the National Gallery of Armenia.