The exhibition “Sixty Shades of Red” opening at the National Gallery of Armenia for the first time represents the art of the renowned painter of St. Petersburg Ashot Khachatryan to the Armenian viewer. He is a member of the Union of Artists of St. Petersburg, as well as the cofounder and the chief editor of the newspaper “Artist of St. Petersburg”. He is also an active public figure as well as a facilitator and a participant of numerous exhibitions held in Russia and abroad.Ashot Khachatryan’s early works stand out with light accomplishment and freedom. He always prefers to develop the endless possibilities of painting.
The artist has worked in various genres-still life, landscape, portrait and complicated compositions of symbolic nature. Each painting has its specific colour solution. He tries to expand the opportunities of using tone, colour and shading. He is strongly drawn to red and green which fill each other. That’s why articles about A Khachatryan’s art were entitled “World of Red Colours” (A. Dmitrenko), “Red and Green” (Lisa Vertin). The artist considers the technique of accomplishment very important, striving to reveal the multilayered means of his paintings. He sometimes does small sketches for the realization of his ideas. The category of the used rhythm determines the inner structure of Ashot’s best works. It gives him an opportunity to turn to such themes as “Poetry” (2010), where the nature embodies the human figure. The theme of the union of human and native land is expressed in other paintings as well. The artist tries to leave his canvases incomplete, making the viewer think about the ending. Maybe in this way he avoids concrete names. Such is the “Triptych”, its images are united, but they can also be exhibited separately. Human life makes only the part of this natural cycle- Maternity, Maturity, Old age and so forth.Ashot Khachatryan doesn’t consider himself to be a portrait painter though sometimes he turns to this genre as well. Levon Lazarev’s portrait is worth mentioning, where the character of the true master of sculpture, of amiable, but at the same time of the strong –willed person is successfully expressed. Details and nuances in his paintings do not hide what is the most important-the inner emotional strain of the image. Those images are mostly conventional. Even the abstract paintings awake feeling of truth and recognition. The main thing for the master is to reveal his own perception of the surrounding environment. He gives a special significance to the phenomenon of beauty. Nowadays it is very important as for many people this category of aesthetic importance has lost its sense. The artist has created a picturesque world where plants grow, and there are high mountains.To reach the strongest expression the artist turns to the picturesque flexibility replacing bright colours with saturated shadings and modulations. The artist’s progress is expressed in passing from colourfulness to more reserved palette. “Self portrait” is the true evidence of the above mentioned, on which the artist has worked rather long and completed it with a special artistic key of reserved decorativeness and strong energy.
Sergey Levandovsky
Leading Specialist of State Russian Museum
www.ashotart.com
